Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1346: Baseball and Eight American Pies

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the fallout from Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s oblique injury and the signings of Adam Jones and Martin Maldonado as referenda on free agency, then answer listener emails about whether the Indians and Astros could have significantly upped their playoff odds by making more moves (and fan bases that should […]

Little duck, little car in the yard Sits a piece and a mallet and chisel That's what I get for doing the right thing Some others ain't when you hang them at the break I went to get mine I went to get mine He's in the pie Hello and welcome to episode 1346 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrafts presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello. Hi Ben. Hello. Meg Rowley is in Arizona, very busy with Fangraphs Things. She'll be back on the show later this week. Today, we're going to do a bit of banter and then also some emails. I guess we should talk about something we were talking about last week, which is Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the fact that we now have a sort of resolution to his spring story. Not exactly what we all expected it to be, but he is now out for the next three weeks or so with a low-grade oblique strain, which is convenient

in a sense, I guess, for the Blue Jays in that he can just sit and they don't have to answer difficult questions about why he's not actually in the majors on opening day. What do you think the mood would have been in the Blue Jays front office when Vladimir Guerrero suffered this oblique strain, which is never something you want a player to suffer because sometimes those things can linger and they can be pesky. On the other hand, this is a good excuse for them to throw out there so they don't have to talk about how his defense is bad and he's not worthy of a shot in the majors well it depends on whether they can like sort of start saying they actually planned like if they could convincingly say that they actually were we're gonna put them on the opening day roster after all then maybe they could spin it and get some credit without having to actually do the hard thing. We buy that, right?

Oh, no. We were definitely going to. Right. They should have. If they had left more room for doubt, like if they had made it seem like they were going to maybe do it, then this would give them an opportunity to claim that this is the only thing thwarting them. Instead, I think that it is actually bad for them because, well, for one thing, it's not like they hadn't already been gaming his service time.

We had already baked in our dissatisfaction with them, right? We've been scorning them for months, maybe since last May. And certainly, I think you would have thought in September that on merit alone, he should have been in the majors last September, probably before that. And my reaction to seeing the news, my first kind of like, like emotional reaction without thinking about it was like, almost blaming them for the oblique strain, which is illogical. Yeah, I saw some conspiracy theories conspiracy theories so they must have just said this because it's like the least serious type of oblique strain and so there was some suspicion that maybe they just fabricated this entry which i don't know why guerrero would go

along with that fiction so i'm pretty confident that's not the case i don't think that they're making it up i i mean like really this is totally illogical okay completely illogically no there's no real mechanism by which one thing leads to the other or anything but my my gut response to it it was like oh the blue jays are ruining it even worse now like they're like they i'm not on their side you know? And so when you're not on the side of an argument, you can take almost any fact and twist it around to support your side and to go against the other side. And even though this fact has nothing to do with his defense or his service time, it still felt like, okay, how am I going to use this little

piece of information to be matter about the Blue Jays? And so I then, I mean, that feeling lasted for like 1 85th of a second. And then the rest of my brain kicked in and was able to separate them. But not everybody has an incentive to think the thing through past the 85th of a second. So what I'm saying is that I actually think that the worst, any bad news on the Vlad Jr. front is bad for the Blue Jays. Just because we're talking about a bigger narrative right now. And one narrative is the world wants to see vlad garros thrive and the other narrative is that we all are sort of accusing the blue jays

in our head of not wanting to see him thrive in the same way and so anytime something bad happens to vlad it's like the blue jays blew it i mean if, if they'd only called him up last May, for instance, then the whole human history after that you twist around too much or whatever you do to inj oh, we'll just take it extra easy and be super cautious with him because he's not going to be up until April 17th anyway or whatever it is. So I could see that maybe. But again, if he is perfectly fine, I'm sure that he would not sit quietly and go along with that. So I don't know. with that so i don't know i i think in a way it's good for them in that we will probably stop asking the questions for a few weeks or people will stop making their twitter dunks about how the blue jays are being disingenuous here on opening day when i don't know brandon drury is dhing for them or whatever playing third base and and vlad's not there it gives them a plausible deniability so

in that sense i think it's good in the other, we all kind of knew what was going to happen anyway. So they don't really get credit, as you were saying. It reminds me a little bit of the Astros and Brady Aiken, where after Brady Aiken reentered the draft and we were all kind of dunking on the Astros at that point, then a series of bad things happened to Brady Aiken that were entirely separate from the Astros' involvement. And Aiken's career generally took a real steep dive.

And logically, all those facts would seem to support the Astros. And probably, at least to some people in the Astros' front office, there's probably a feeling almost of relief that the things that they were worried about bore out and that Aiken is not going to like probably really burn them for their decision. And they probably would expect a little bit of like a little bit of an apology. Like, like, sure. After all that, in fact, it was true that Aiken's elbow was really at risk and they made the right decision. But it does not feel that way. And it didn't feel that way when Aiken needed Tommy John.

It all sort of felt like, yeah, remember how the Astros messed up everything with Brady Aiken? Right. I don't know. We're simple narrative folks. And to me, everything bad that happens to Brady Aiken in a really weird way, my first response is a little bit of lizard brain blaming of the Astros for their initial role in it all. Yeah. So another story that had kind of become part of the negative discourse about baseball this offseason resolved itself this weekend as well when Adam Jones signed with the Diamondbacks for one year and three million dollars and Jones had sort of become one of the

faces of the new free agency where veteran players who aren't stars have trouble getting deals or at least the deals that they want to get. And I don't know that Jones made a perfect poster boy for that class of players, because I think that a lot of the players who have signed what seemed to be below market deals were actually really good still. And you could point at them and say, why is Yosemite Grandal only getting one year and 18 million? Whereas with Jones, it's kind of hard to make a purely statistical case that he is still an attractive free agent and so you kind of have to make an extra statistical case pointing to his clubhouse leadership and his belovedness by fans which are

real things of course also but he i think has really sort of slipped as a player. And so it's hard to make the case that even if you were to fix free agency in some way, that Adam Jones would really be a player that a lot of teams were clamoring for. So Dan Szymborski wrote something for FedGraphs on Monday where he linked together Adam Jones and Martin Maldonado, who both signed over the weekend. He linked together Adam Jones and Martin Maldonado who both signed over The weekend Maldonado signed For one year and 2.5 million with the Royals who

Needed a catcher to replace Salvador Perez and he basically Pointed out that yeah these Guys you know in an earlier time maybe They would have made more money but Right now they just probably Wouldn't at least Jones wouldn't because He can't play center anymore At least least not well. He doesn't hit so well anymore. Maldonado is a good defensive catcher, but he really doesn't hit even by catcher standards, which are lower than they've been in a really long time. So other than an earlier era where you had front offices not understanding agent curbs and not understanding player evaluation as well as they do now. I'm not sure that these guys could hope for that much better an outcome.

Yeah, I wouldn't have expected. Tumming Jones is less about this offseason's storyline of older free agents no longer getting the older free agent money that older free agents used to get and more of like the three or four years ago storyline of defensively limited hitters not getting not being all that attractive anymore i mean he's he still hits uh his his hitting hasn't really declined over the last few years he's been you know fairly consistent it's a little bit of a dip but not a major one and if you wanted a league average hitter in a corner spot, which used to be a pretty valuable concept,

then he probably would have had more bidders. But we sort of saw that market specifically dry up a few years ago. And now that he, I mean, if you look at his offensive numbers, he hasn't declined much. If you look at his war, he has declined a lot because he's now putting up like negative 70 defensive numbers in center field. So presumably as a corner outfielder, he's not that. I mean, when we were growing up, a corner outfielder who would hit 19 home runs and be a little bit better than league average would have been seen as better than he is now.

And so that's just kind of a little bit of bad luck to be born in this era and have that skill set. Yeah. I mean, he got a big extension. So it's not one of those cases where a player gets to free agency and it's going to be his one payday and then it doesn't materialize. He did pretty well earlier in his career. And it's interesting because you talked to Adam Jones about how good young players are today, which is kind of implied also that older players are not so good because they're kind of getting forced out by the younger players.

And I liked that quote so much that I appropriated it for my book. And he was like sort of philosophical about the whole thing, right? That like he was the hotshot star just a few years ago. He was like a five-win player for a few years. And then all of a sudden he's only 33 and yet he just very much is past his prime at this point. Yeah, that was the Cars 3 quote. Right. Which is like sort of a meta quote about aging because so uh, so he, his quote was, uh, it's not an excuse, but the game's gotten harder. That's all it is.

The next generation. It's like that line from cars three, his grandpa told him, you'll know when to retire. The youngsters will tell you. And, uh, like, uh, the, the two kinds of people who would quote cars three are like nine year olds and their dads. Yeah. And so like quoting that, yeah, exactly. It was a their dads. Yeah, you have to be old to just even quote that. Yeah, exactly.

It was a dad quote. Yeah, right. Not even Cars 1, by the way. No. A Cars 1 quote, sure. You could imagine a Cars 1 quote coming from a guy who's still got some good years left. I'm not sure I knew there was a Cars 3. I knew they made a second one, but I have not been following the franchise that closely.

You know what I noticed the other day? I did not realize this, but on Netflix, I was scrolling through Netflix. And how many American Pie movies would you guess there are? Oh, man. There must have been some like straight to video ones right after everyone stopped paying attention. I'll guess there are four. Yeah. I'll guess there were four. Yeah, I also thought there were four. There were, I think, eight.

Oh my goodness. Maybe nine. Oh, wow. The American Pie cinematic universe, much larger than I imagined. And let's see, another one. There's another one in production why is it just is it like one of those things where there's like one original cast member who's still in it kind of so that there's some continuity i did glance at that and i think that the uh the

the uh the continuity keeps coming back no it was eugene Eugene Levy. And then also the sort of weird, nerdy pervert kid who was just outside the social circle. Remember him? Yeah. I think he's in them. Okay. Well, I'm learning a lot today. The other thing about Martin Maldonado is that he switched agents. He switched from Scott Boris to Dan Lozano, who are like mortal enemies, apparently.

And he did that, it seems, because he was not happy with how Scott Boris had handled his free agency. I think Ken Rosenthal reported that Maldonado had gotten an offer of two years and $12 million early in the offseason. And now he ended up settling for one year and 2.5 with some incentives. And that has been another constant throughout all this new free agency stuff is that there have been a lot of cases, it seems like, where agents have maybe misread the market or thought that they could hold out for a really long time and those big offers would materialize. Like if you would ask me at the beginning of the offseason if Martin Maldonado could get more than 2-12, I don't think I would have been optimistic about that coming off his last couple offensive seasons. So like holding out and waiting till spring training works fine if your client is Manny Machado or Bryce Harper.

But if it's Martin Maldonado, it doesn't work so well unless Salvador Perez hurts himself. So I don't know if agents, I mean, it feels kind of wrong to say, well, they should just take what they can get. They should just settle for this new system. get your clients the most money they can get, you almost have to accept that certain guys are not going to get certain deals that they might have gotten in the past and that you're probably only going to hurt them by holding out for that type of deal. It's hard to know. That's worth looking at. I mean, in any market, there's always usually at least one guy who turns down something that, in retrospect, he shouldn't have turned down and ends up signing for a lot less and you would think that that given the incentives involved that would be probably just as likely to happen in a in a great market because you might you know be really

ambitious and and just figure everything's everything's crazy right now so who knows what amazing offer is going to come later on i as, as you know, looked at kind of the history of players stating what they're looking for. Oh, right. And I have to redo that. Yeah, that's exactly right. I might have to redo that. It might be interesting. You need to, what you need to get is 73,000 leaked documents about all the offers that were made to players so that we can really assess, because I imagine that the leaked offers we can really assess because yeah i imagine that the leaked offers we get are in no way comprehensive and that they might be misrepresentative of the larger pool of turned down offers but maybe not i wonder if we i wonder if we get most of them

what did you find that the percentage was that they end up getting 83 i think so usually it's uh it's it was actually i think it was about 83 dollars and about 83 years yeah yeah that must have come down in the last couple years i would i would think it does feel like it yeah and i think i've quit retweeting that article because it you know after it came out then when someone would ask for some dollars and then they'd sign a thing, I would tweet the article out and be like, it was 83%. And then I quit tweeting them, which probably means that I kept checking and they were no longer 83%. Right. Yeah. Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrell are probably trying to drag that down right now. Well, just what Harper got, 83%. Oh, did he? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you believe what 400 was what we what we thought was

the asking right yeah that's right well you should tweet that article again yeah you think you'll ever tweet that you're involved in this podcast again uh when we record a fun episode okay i'll know when we did a good one i liked the. I really liked the team preview that we just did. That was my favorite team preview that we've ever done. I thought that Barry and Ryan were two of the very best team preview interviews that I've ever been a part of. But not tweet worthy. I don't tweet as much. I know.

Neither do I really, but I still promote myself. All right. Emails. Well, I guess we can just continue in this theme because we have a couple emails that are related to what we were just talking about. So this one's from Jamie. He says, according to Pakoda, Cleveland currently has a 90% chance of making the ALDS and a 14.6% chance of winning the World Series.

For Houston, the numbers are 86% and 14.1%. If either of those teams had chosen to add a hundred million dollars extra payroll in the off season, how much higher do you think those numbers would be? What about for 50 million or 200 million? Basically how much can you actually budge your Pocota chances of making the division series or winning the world series by offseason spending? I'm going to go look and see what the breakdown of those ALDS numbers are.

If they're mainly winning the division, if they're almost entirely winning the division, how much of that is wildcard basically. So hang on a second. Must be mostly division, certainly for the Indians. I mean, that's kind of the thing like with the Indians, with the Dodgers. I don't know what Pakoda says about the NL West, but I remember looking not long ago and there was like a 12-win separation between the Dodgers and the next best team projected in the NL West. after Machado, or at least Machado didn't move it much. And so you can kind of understand why teams like the Indians and the Dodgers are looking at where they stand and thinking, well, we could add a free agent, but we're almost locks to make the playoffs as it is. So how much is this actually going to affect our odds? Can I, I'm going to scoop an article that I just submitted last night and that I think is going to

run in a week or so. Okay. Because this is just a small part of it. But about Cleveland and about the AL Central. So last year, Cleveland won 91 games, which is pretty good. They won the division by a lot. They went 49 and 27 against the AL Central, which would be 104 win team over the course of 162 games. would be 104 win team over the course of 162 games. And against the rest of the league, they went 42 and 44,

which would be a 79 win team over 162 games. And so I thought, well, maybe that was just then. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe they happened to be hot when they were playing, you know, the division stretch, and maybe they happened to be cold when they were playing. So I looked at the other four teams. So if you just split them into division and non-division, the Twins in their division would have been a 90 win team over 162 games. And against the rest of the league, a 68 win team, which is also a huge gap. The Tigers,

70 in the division, 58 outside the division, which is a huge gap. The White Sox, 64 in the division, 60 outside the division, which is a small gap. The White Sox, 64 in the division, 60 outside the division, which is a small gap but still orients in the same direction. And the Royals, this is a good one, the Royals, 77-win team inside the division, 41-win team outside the division, which means that... Almost like the AL Central was bad last year. The AL Central was very, very bad, and we know that.

We know the AL Central was bad. We've all said the AL Central was bad. Jeff Sullivan was, I think, tracking to see whether the AL Central was very, very bad. And we know that. We know the AL Central was bad. We've all said the AL Central is bad. Jeff Sullivan was, I think, tracking to see whether the AL Central was going to be the worst division in history by- I did too. It was the second worst, actually. It was the second worst. Yeah. And of course we know that, but I don't know if we think enough about whether that means that Cleveland is actually actually a bad team now and so this suggests that cleveland might be a bad team like a sub 500 team and pakoda i don't think thinks that i don't it's hard to know because pakoda's playoff odds are are including their schedule yeah and so you know maybe that is already baked in but the depth depth charts do not, though, I think.

Right. If you look at the the the standings do not. In fact, the playoff odds do, but the standings do not. And so the standings have Cleveland one game worse than the Yankees and two games worse than the Astros, which puts them among the top tier of baseball teams in the world. And I am now I'm against that projection. I've turned on Cleveland a little bit. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's unquestionable that the Cleveland Indians could have made some moves that would have made them a lot better at baseball because right now

their outfield is Jake Bowers and Tyler Naquin and Leonis Martin, I guess. And there were some pretty good outfielders available this winter. So you'd think that they could have upgraded there as good as their rotation is and as good as Lindor and Ramirez is. So clearly they could have gotten better. It just, it probably wouldn't have increased their odds of winning the Central very much. So then the question is how much can you actually improve your World Series odds given that you're going to win the division, which I think we all think, oh, it's a crapshoot and anything can happen and it's a five-game series, et cetera, et cetera. And there's certainly some truth to that, which is not to say that it's entirely random, but it's just, you know, if the Indians had signed Bryce Harper, what are the chances that Bryce Harper would make the difference in that division series? Maybe he would have. There's some chance that he would have. But if you're not going to commit $25 million a year to someone otherwise, then maybe that's just not

enough to push you across the line. Let's say hypothetically that we could run 30 simulations of the universe. And in each one one of these simulations a different team misses the playoffs by one game okay so in one universe the indians missed by one game and one the the cubs missed by one game and so on whose fan base will be the most upset about their team their team's passivity in in this um odd slow offseason where nobody wanted to sign players? Huh. Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe the Cubs, I think, are— See, the Cubs inactivity, I think, is more glaring to me, putting aside payroll, because I know they have spent more money

than some of these other teams, but putting that aside, they're in a position where you really need those wins because they're in the NL Central, which is a very competitive division. And it's not clear that they're the best team or if they are, it's not by a whole lot. So I think it was less understandable for them to sit on their hands than it was for the Dodgers or the Indians. I don't know whether fans are looking at it that way. I kind of think all fan bases would be equally outraged. Well, not equally, though.

They'd all be outraged, of, not equally though. They'd all be outraged, of course. Yeah. I'm trying to rank them. Well, yeah. I don't know if it is actually, not sure if it's relative. It might just be everyone's mad. But I think probably because the Cubs just did almost nothing, right? They signed Brad Brock and brought back Cole Hamels and that was about it. And maybe the Indians, because they've been in this spot a few years, and maybe there's some frustration like, hey, we're letting this slip away, like at least the Cubs won one. The Indians keep kind of getting there, but they're never quite good enough in the World

Series or in the playoffs, although it comes down to a game seven and a rain delay and everything. They were just as deserving of winning that series really as the Cubs were. So I don't know. Does one stand out to you? I kind of think it's similar. I think that I have seven teams that I think would stand above the rest a little bit. And the Cubs are one of them for sure.

Pirates are one of them. Not necessarily that they should have gone all in on this year or anything like that, but there seems to be a lot of anger that the Pirates are run the way they are and that they're sort of run the way they are even when they're kind of in that competitive bubble zone. So it seems like there's just a lot of complaining about that. So the Pirates, the Cubs, I think the Indians are because they actually got worse. Seemingly strategically, they got a little worse to kind of play to the division and save some resources for later, which might make sense, but it doesn't necessarily make happiness. They were talking about trading Kluber and Bauer all winter, even though they didn't do it.

Yeah, they were thinking about it. Yeah, exactly. Kluber and Bauer all winter, even though they didn't do it. Yeah, exactly. They were thinking about it. Yeah, exactly. And then the Braves, I think, could be one because the rest of the division did a lot. And the Braves did get Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann, but they're supposed to be in that kind of free spending, exuberant, coming out of terribleness phase that is so much

fun. coming out of terribleness phase that is so much fun. And instead they kind of were passive and all the other teams got better or at least signed a bunch of players around them. So that's four. How many did I say? Seven? Yeah. The Dodgers, just because for the Dodgers, I think that's always,

there's always a feeling that they could spend more. Even if they do get five guys, there's a feeling that they could get six and that they don't, they're playing a different game than fans want them to. And of course, they were linked to bigger stars than they got. So that's five. The Diamondbacks, I could see because the Diamondbacks were a pretty good team last year. And they had a good run differential. They were in first place for a lot of the year. They're not even a bad team right now. Pakoda projects them to win, I think, 82.

And they took a step back. So I could see that being. And then maybe the seventh one might have been the Rays just because permanently. Yeah. Yeah. So if the Indians had signed Bryce Harper, let's say, what do you think their World Series odds would budge? of outcomes where you don't make it not only is there not much room to grow but i would imagine that a lot of those 10 are like utter collapse like those are the those are the sims where where a good team wins like 64 games which there there are you run a million sims to get your playoff odds and you have somewhere the yankees win 64 games or whatever good team wins 64 games

and bryce harper's not going to fix that I mean, you're talking about like the years where the team really, really, really, really badly underperforms. But the other thing is that, I mean, just practically speaking to answer this question, Bryce Harper is not a nine win player by Dakota's reckoning. What is he? A four win player? Five, probably four, four, four and a half ish. And they probably have a mostly average players at each position.

I haven't looked at their... I don't know if they do in the outfield, but yeah. Let me see if these are updated. Do we have? No, they don't have. They don't have the projections by position, but probably two wins or so of an upgrade, maybe, in Dakota's reckoning. Yeah.

So I would say that had they signed Bryce Harper, that Cleveland's chances would be like 93% to make the ALDS and 14.8% to win the World Series instead of 14.6%. And the Astros would be probably a little bit less even than that because they have more depth in their outfield. Right. Yeah. That's why it's probably kind of tough to make a case to an owner who is not inclined to spend that money in the first place that if you're in this position if you're the phillies that's one thing because the phillies benefited hugely i think from adding the players that they did but

if you're the indians or the astros you can kind of see why that's a tougher sell to the person who is controlling the purse strings. If you were to try to somehow do playoff odds for the next 13 years for each of these teams, what year would you guess that their playoff odds, as far as you can calculate, using the best information you have about the players, the finances, and the fundamentals of the franchise, The players, the finances, and the fundamentals of the franchise. At what year would you guess that Bryce Harper would have a negative effect on their chances of making the ALDS and or winning the World Series? 2025. Oh, wow. That's sooner than I would say. Sooner than you would say.

Yeah. I mean, he's 26, and so I don't think that I would probably have his aging curve. I'm taking him out to Adam Jones' age. He'll be watching Cars 4 at that point. Adam Jones was 2.6 war in 2017, and he was— Well, Bryce Huckbert, depending on the war, was like a one-win player last year. And Jones was above replacement level Last year even Woefully miscast as a center fielder I think on a different team Adam Jones was a

One more player last year If they just stuck him in a corner And I think that Harper's Contract in 2025 Is not in any real way prohibitive Especially if Salary inflation picks up a little bit I don't know if he'll be a very good

Player at that point maybe But alright question From Damien considering the High prospect value of trading for Elite relievers in season And comparing it to the success that Roger Clemens had with his in season contracts At the end of his career does it seem like

Craig Kimbrell could make a case that his Negotiating leverage could be even higher in season than during the offseason? I see an odd leverage curve that may be at its lowest right about now, but will continue to rise until approaching the point in the season where he couldn't be added to a playoff roster, then steadily declining. I think that if there were 15 Craig Kimbrells doing this every year, they would, well, then you maybe have a glut of Craig Kimbrels on the market. So maybe that would backfire. But I think that the theory that is being espoused here is true, except it would not

be in the reality we live in because it would be seen as too risky. It would be too anomalous. I think teams would be less eager to sign a player who hadn't been playing, particularly after the narrative that came out of last year's free agent crop where the players who signed really late into spring training or even into the season really struggled to get to game speed and took a long time to be good. So I think there would be a lot of concern about going and getting Craig Kimbrell, who had been inactive for the season, as opposed to going out and getting a player who you could see on the field that week pitching really well. So the concept would have to be kind of proven by like, like if there was a Craig Kimbrell who did this every year, then by year four, I think it might be true. But is Clemens enough of a precedent? year, then by year four, I think it might be true. But is Clemens enough of a precedent?

Too long ago, too unique. Too long ago, too unique. And wasn't he only good once when he did it? Didn't he do that twice in one year? It was bad. He did do it a couple of times. Let's see. I don't think he was bad either time, but I think he was much better one time. Did he only do that with the Yankees? No, he did it with the Astros too. I mean, he was pretty good up until his very last season, I guess, which he probably, that's one of the times he did it, I guess, right? And he was pretty good for a 44-year-old, but not difference-making really. Yeah. Assuming that he did this both of the last two years,

in his final full season, he won the Cy Young award. Oh, sorry. He finished third in the Cy Young voting. He had a 1.87 ERA. Yeah. And then the next year he did a half season and he had a 2.3 ERA, which is really good. And then he did it the next season and he had a 4.18 ERA and was basically league average and his strikeouts dropped and it's hard

to untangle what was the aging and what was any other factors. But the other thing with Clemens is that part of the idea there was that he was, he was old and it made sense to only want to get 18 starts out of him instead of trying to get him through a whole year. So it wasn't quite as, it's not quite as clear that for a normal player who's 29 years old, that there's a huge benefit to shortening his season the same way that it kind of seems obvious and undeniable that it would for a 44 year old. Yeah. And people are probably wary about Kimbrel as it is just because of how he

looked last October. And I think that, I mean, as you said, the general principle is true. I remember Dave Cameron writing about this, that you just get more per war basically when you make an in-season move than you would expect, even though you're only trading half a season's worth of a player, you still get more than you would for half a season if you traded that in the offseason because people know if they're going to make the playoffs, everyone has a clearer idea of what their needs are and whether they're actually a contender.

And so there are a lot of teams that might be interested in Craig Kimbrell, all else being equal, in July than are right now. But yeah, as you're saying, I think, I don't know. I mean, he could throw for people. He could stay in shape. He could just tweet videos of himself throwing 97 or whatever, but I think people would still be wary of committing a lot of money. If he only wanted, if he just wanted to go like half season by half season, then I guess he could do that. People would pay for Craig Kimbrell for half a season in June or July, I think.

If he wanted to sign the big long-term deal that he currently wants to sign, I think people would be even more scared about doing that then. The other thing is that if you see yourself as a certain playoff team, like the Astros, for instance, then when you sign a player, probably most of the value that you expect to get out of them, or at least a large part of the value you expect to get out of them is the post-season performance. And you would maybe rather not pay for all those months that you don't really

need them that much, but you're willing to pay a lot for the post-season. So, I mean, I, I was thinking about this with Cleveland as an example, if they had decided rather than getting a little worse, maybe this off season and making the division a little bit closer, if they had decided, well, let's just be as good as we possibly can and then use the regular season in a totally different way, like rest our players aggressively, you know, have Lindor only play a hundred games and then he'll be super fresh and we don't have to have him you know dealing with some nagging injury when October comes around but Lindor wants his numbers he wants to have

all those career accomplishments that come from from playing every day and so my guess is that you would not have a lot of appetite I know that there's two forces at work here one is that for ball players this is their job and they all like days off and they kind of hate the grind. But on the other hand, they have a very short period of time in their careers to put up numbers. And I think that they would like more rest in theory, but in practice, they want more at bats and more innings. So I don't think this would be that appealing to Craig Kimbrell as a plan. or something, someone you could imagine just giving the ball to for two or three innings at a time in the playoffs, then that would increase his perceived value in mid-season. But Kimbrell, I think, is seen as a guy who's just going to go one inning. And if he tries to go more than one

inning as he did last year, then things are going to get scary. So I don't know that he would get that boost that some other relievers might get. All right, Ben, let's do this. If Craig Kimbrell signs a one-year deal right now, a one-year deal right now, what do you think he gets paid? Josh Donaldson got 20, right? That was like the biggest one-year deal that has been given out, I think. So if Donaldson got 20. He got 23. 23, okay. All right.

In that case, Kimbrell could get 20, right? I think he could get 20. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Okay. I mean, Chapman got, what did Chapman get?

19 for five years? Something like that. So one year and 20. All right. So you say one year and 20. If Craig Kimbrell does not sign and instead signs on July 15th, what will he get for a half-year deal? 13. Chapman got 17, by the way.

Five and 17.2. So you'll say 13 million for the half-year. Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. You answered that. It'd be a terrible deal for him. Is that blessed?

Yeah. What do I do now? What do I do? It's called now do I have to pause for the music to play do we have a dance party I stick the song in

right now and then you just talk alright is OBS Plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Daystoplast. Okay, go ahead. All right. We still did the pause uh okay i'm going to cash in a query a statistical blast

that i that i've previously written about because you never got to talk about it how would you know uh good point i don't think you did though this was okay we'll see all right so uh in november i got to thinking about manager height uh-huh that was an odd uh-huh i read that one i don't think we talked about it though all right so i started thinking about manager height and wondering if managers are... I think I noticed that it seemed to me that managers were short. And so using blasts of stats, I looked at all the manager heights for all the managers going back like 15 or so years to see if they were tall or short. And they turned out to be short. Yes.

Do you play the music again now? No, just once. All right. And this was especially notable because all the managers at that point that had been hired in the offseason had been shorter than the men that they had replaced, except for Rocco Baldelli, who is taller. And there aren't really any extremely tall managers. There aren't really

any what you would consider tall managers. Like there are a lot of tall baseball players. Six foot five is nothing for a ballplayer. But six foot four is the tallest manager in baseball, which means that you have a whole group of ballplayers who never become managers. And this is basically I think there might be one exception, but this is basically true of the last couple of decades. And so I got a spreadsheet with every manager's height. And then I got the league average height for the year that they for the median year of their playing career. These are all playing days heights, by the way. So if they're shrinking, if they're hunching over with age, that's not a factor here. Or if they're growing.

That's true. And I had to, I had to estimate on Mike Schilt because Mike Schilt doesn't have a playing height, which is so cute. So I talked to people who know him. They said, oh, he's about yay high. And so I compared their heights to the average playing height of their peers when they were careers. And the results are, as my hypothesis stated, that they are shorter than normal. So the average major league manager is 72.4 inches tall, which is just barely over six feet. That's shorter than the ballplayers that they're managing, of course, on average, who are a little taller than six foot two these days, but it is also shorter for the ballplayers that they were playing with and who would have presumably formed

the rest of the potential managers of their generation who were on average six foot one and a half. So they're about an inch shorter than average. I then adjusted for position. So I compared their playing career height with the playing career height of the average player of their position during their career. And they were still shorter than their average, although only slightly, slightly less short, but still shorter.

I mean, out of like 50 managers or maybe a hundred, I forget they were shorter than average. So this is not a huge, huge 0.2 inches shorter than average. So this is not a huge finding by any means. And,. And I'm not sure whether I wrote this article in seriousness or in whimsy. It was not clear to me when I started it. It was not clear to me when I finished it. But there were a few things that struck me as interesting about this. One is that the general rule of thumb in American business over the past century has been that height is actually a common bias for hiring managerial positions. That's why the race hired Jeff instead of me. That's a good theory. Tall people tend to get a lot more promotions and this shows up commonly

in the literature. It's been well studied and it's seen as potentially a real problem in business. And that is not happening in baseball. So in one sense, you could say that that is a fantastic example of baseball not falling for the height bias. Another factor, though, is that there is a huge, one of the reasons that the overall height is much shorter than the overall player pool before I did the positional adjustments is that managers get hired really only from a few positions. So we know that catchers make up a disproportionate number of baseball managers, which makes a certain amount of sense, but that's not what's really driving this. What really drives this more is that first basemen essentially never get hired to be

managers and pitchers almost never get hired to be managers, which I believe is an article that you wrote one time. And outfielders don't often get hired to be managers. And so this is potentially a troubling source of bias if you think that that's a bad idea. troubling source of bias if you think that that's a bad idea. And in particular, in this era, when most of the X's and O's managing that takes place has to do more with pitching management and managing pitcher usage, managing pitching changes, and knowing who the best pitcher is in any given moment based on how they're throwing, how their health is, how their stuff looks, how fresh they are, who's ready, what role they are. All of that seems like it is mostly

managing is now mostly a pitching management game. And yet pitchers are more or less kept out of managerial ranks. So those are the two kind of interesting things that I took from this data. But I wanted to ask you, because we're here together talking, what your feeling is about the overall process of hiring managers these days. And to get out of the way, the much more important thing that I think most people think is undeniably true, there does seem to be a real bias toward hiring American managers and people whose first language is English. And that does really seem to be problematic. And I think that the numbers are kind of undeniable in that sense. And so that is a much bigger issue and much less debatable,

I think, issue. But putting that aside and just thinking about the philosophical approach that teams take to the managerial pool, do you have a feeling that managerial hiring is efficient? Do you think that teams have a good idea of who the best managerial candidates are? Or is it fairly narrow thinking and kind of limiting the imagination that we've seen in other parts of the sport. I think it's probably gotten more imaginative in certain ways, although it's still mostly just former players. It's just now usually not so often older former players who've already had three managerial jobs. It's younger players who just retired and are maybe new to managing. I mean, if I were running a team, I'd probably hire someone with the sort of background that Rocco Baldelli has, I guess. I mean, it just seems like maybe the best candidates

aren't being found, but in baseball, at least, historically speaking, there has been such an emphasis on having played. And if you're going to get someone who has played, which is just a deeply ingrained part of the baseball culture at this point, then you also want someone who's open-minded, who's going to listen to the front office, et cetera, et cetera, all this stuff we've talked about, this new model of manager. I assume that there are people who maybe aren't pushing for the job who would be good at it, but their names just don't come up. You'd think that since a lot of it is just interpersonal stuff, then I guess there's this just kind of grapevine of, oh, this guy seems like a future manager. You hear it about catchers usually, about players, cerebral players, quote unquote, all the time. This guy will make a good future

manager. He thinks about the game like a manager. I would guess that they're doing a somewhat decent job of finding the best people within this group of people that has always been the manager. There might be people who are not in baseball at all who would be better managers than some of these managers or people who are just completely out of the box of the typical kind of managerial candidate who just aren't even considered when you get your list of 13 people who are being considered and it's all guys who've been bench coaches or players or people who are interested in stats but also have a playing background i guess it's the safe thing to do.

Safe is not always a bad thing. I'm sure there are a lot of good managerial candidates who don't get managerial jobs, but I would also guess that the people who do get the managerial jobs are generally decent choices. Mike Schilt didn't play pro ball, and he's a manager. And we've seen a lot more hitting instructors and also pitching instructors over the last few years come from unconventional backgrounds. And that really seems to be no longer a, anything that rules out a non-professional player from getting a job as uniformed personnel the way that it seems to have been in the past.

So if you could estimate in 25 years, let's say that there are still 30 managers, there will be more than 30 managers in 25 years, but what percentage of managers will have played no pro ball? And so college will accept, I'll even accept indie ball, but not affiliated ball. And separate question, what percentage of managers will be pitchers all right i'll say that 50 of managers will have played pro ball i'll say it comes down considerably but it's still very common or close to the majority and wait hang on now yeah 50 is not so wait 50 you're calling 50 very common which it technically is. That would mean that half are.

Very rare compared to what it has been. Yeah. I think it's going to be a lot less common. Okay. All right. 50% played affiliated ball. That's a lot lower than I would have guessed. It's a lot lower than it's ever been, certainly.

So I'll say that. And the problem is that, and this is something I write about in the book, is that for a while there, you had players not becoming high-level front office people the way that they used to because the game had changed and players hadn't really kept up with it. So you have only, what, Jerry DiPoto and Billy Bean, I guess, are the only former players right now who are GMs. And I think that will probably swing back the other way so that it may become more common than it has been in the last decade or two, just because there are a lot of players who are very progressive and are interested in analysis. And everyone knows about the technology and everything. Everyone knows that this is the way they're evaluated. So they get into it early.

So I guess that is maybe kind of inconsistent with my estimate about the managers because you'd figure that if more players are going to become GMs, then those GMs will probably want to hire managers who are also players or that they know. So maybe I'm wrong to say that in general, I would like to think that baseball would be more open-minded about just hiring the best candidate, whoever that candidate is, even if it's not someone who played. The question is how much having played makes you a good manager in baseball, where that's always been the case that is just expected. And in the rare cases when someone who wasn't a player or a high-level player becomes a manager, you hear about how it's because they weren't a player and they lost the clubhouse and all that. So that will probably take some time to change. And you're right. Probably 50 is too low. But of the percentage of managers that were former players, if the percentage is now like what, 5%, 10% or something? There are two out of 30 at the moment.

So 7% are at the moment so seven seven percent are at the moment and when you wrote about pitchers who were managers it was it was comparable over a larger time frame as well yeah so i'll say i'll say a quarter i'll say 25 if only because they're just more pitchers than there used to be just proportionally speaking because bullpens are bigger and teams are constantly shuttling pitchers than there used to be, just proportionally speaking, because bullpens are bigger and teams are constantly shuttling pitchers on and off the roster, just like there are hundreds and hundreds of pitchers every year. So you're kind of increasing the size of the pool of potential managers there. All right. I'm saying 95% will have played pro ball, maybe 100%.

The same, basically. Yeah, the same unless the job is radically reimagined um and it becomes common for the the same people that basically work in front offices now somehow become managers in the future i'm imagining like yeah like basketball coaches becoming baseball managers basically just like people on the sidelines in suits you know which would be a a dramatic change obviously for baseball but baseball is kind of the outlier when it comes to sports i mean every other sport is not having just some former player in uniform on the bench so it's a good point yeah and having seen more coaches come from the college ranks to the pro ranks

makes that a lot more possible, I think, as well. But I'm still going to stick with almost all of them will play pro ball. But I could see you being right. However, I'm going to say that in, what did I say, 25 years? Yeah. 85% of managers will be pitchers. Okay. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty dramatic. I can't really, it doesn't seem to me that a position player would have any advantage that a pitcher wouldn't have. And a pitcher would have a lot of advantages that a position player would have. It also, I feel like a pitcher, in a way, because a pitcher isn't playing all the time and is sitting around on a bench talking about baseball or watching the game for a large part of their job, it almost feels like a pitching career would be naturally more preparatory for a managerial career. But also in addition to that, perhaps it seems to me that pitcher careers are a lot more likely to end sooner than hitting careers, which might not be

true. I mean, guys wash out in every position at an early age for various reasons, but you're much more likely to be a good pitcher and then suddenly be retired than you are to be a good hitter in the majors and suddenly retired at 28. And since both, since youth is valued in managers now in a way that it didn't used to be, and also since the, an early, kind of an early end to your career gives you a chance to, uh, play different roles in an organization while still staying young, uh, like Rocco Baudelli. Rocco Baudelli is, is sort of the pitcher of hitters, right? Uh, his career ended early, despite the fact that he was very good because of a series of injuries that simply couldn't be gotten over. series of injuries that simply couldn't be gotten over. And so then he went and he became very experienced in the sport throughout the different parts of the sport in front offices and in scouting. And that made him a really good managerial candidate as well as his natural demeanor. So it's just seems to me that there are more opportunities for pitchers to become the model

managerial candidate by age 35 than there are for hitters. I don't know if I agree about the preparatory aspect of it because I think with pitchers, you can often just kind of check out like either you're in the clubhouse and you're a starter, you're pitching every five days and your head isn't in the game in the same way on a day-to-day basis that you are if you're a position player and you're kind of thinking about, okay, what I'm going to do in my next at-bat or I've got to be ready for this pitch. Where am I going to position myself? Or even if you're a bench person, you're like, okay, thinking along with the manager, when am I going to get in this game?

When might he use me? That sort of thing. Whereas if you're a pitcher, you're either, you know, you're not pitching or you're just sort of sitting in the bullpen flipping sunflower seeds for seven innings so that is very true you might be right and i think that's probably true for the larger pool of players but not necessarily for those that are prone to go into managing eventually that among the select group of players who are kind of identified as future managerial material maybe that wouldn't be the case. But I'm not nearly as confident about the last thing I said than I was 45 seconds ago.

All right. Let's see if we can get in one or two more here before we end. So this one is from Andrew in Vancouver, longtime listener, first-time emailer. It was announced recently that new Blue Jay Freddie Galvis would be changing his uniform number in tribute to Jose Bautista once he discovered that the number he had been assigned, 19, was once Bautista's. I guess we could also lump in Bryce Harper here, who decided not to use Roy Halladay's uniform number. Meanwhile, Andrew continues, new Detroit Tiger Josh Harrison recently decided to wear number one in tribute to Lou Whitaker.

Recently decided to wear number one in tribute to Lou Whitaker. Which do you think is a more fitting tribute to deliberately wear someone's number or to deliberately not wear it? Ooh. Ooh. Yeah. Good question. Hmm. Hmm. I mean, the whole idea behind retiring uniform numbers is that presupposes that no one else being able to wear it is the best tribute,

right? It doesn't mean that's right, but that sort of underlies the whole thing. Like this person was so good that no one else will ever be worthy of wearing his number or obscuring what he accomplished. And so we'll hang his number up in the rafters, which is a way of like putting it out there. Like, I don't know. I didn't see what Josh Harrison's rationale was, but presumably he's thinking like, hey,

I can honor Lou Whitaker by wearing this uniform number and I can use this as an opportunity to bring him up. Yeah. Well, these are such different circumstances. And so with Halliday, it is obvious that the number will be retired someday right well the man is in the hall of fame but but he only pitched four years with the Phillies and I think there have been other pitchers or players who have worn that number since he retired I don't know AJ Burnett did yeah so so so yeah he's more of a blue jay to me he well he is definitely more of blue jay

yeah i don't think that freddie galvis should wear his number for the blue jays is that who we were talking about we were talking about freddie galvis on the blue jays yeah okay good i wasn't listening to the start of this all that closely yeah i was trying to find andrew's email in my inbox uh all right so let's just put put aside that, that I'm wrong about holiday. Let's just, for the sake of simplicity, let's continue to note that there are different circumstances here. So in one case, you might have a player whose uniform number is going to be retired and simply hasn't yet. And in that case, it does seem like it would be kind of disrespectful or would be kind of annoying that you jumped in there at the last minute, even though clearly the intent of the team probably can be surmised. And then in another case, you have Lou Whitaker, whose number should have been retired.

And Josh Harrison is in a sense protesting. He's almost shaming the Tigers. Exactly, he is. Why am I allowed to wear this number? Exactly, right. It calls attention to the unmemorialized career of Lou Whitaker. And then in the Freddie Galvis case, I don't think that Bautista's number is likely to be retired.

And I don't think that wearing his number in six years will be seen as, will even evoke the memory of Jose Bautista as a Blue Jay. And I kind of feel like maybe last year, it would have been nice to not wear his number, but this year he should have felt perfectly fine. Like I would not have felt like he was in any way stomping on Jose Bautista's memory. I don't know. I mean stomping on Jose Bautista's memory. I don't know. I mean, I know that Bautista meant a lot to Blue Jays fans because he got the back to the playoffs. He flipped the bat. Yeah, he flipped the bat. So I get that. I think, I don't know, if I were Freddy Galvis, I might just not want to do it because I'm Freddy Galvis and I might not want to look presumptuous to anyone.

I wouldn't want anyone to look at me and have any reason to compare me with Jose Bautista, I guess is basically what I'm thinking. I just wouldn't want that extra added burden, if it is one at all. So I can see why he wouldn't want to. I absolutely think that it's a good call by Josh Harrison just to bring attention, as you're saying, to Lou Whitaker because Lou Whitaker is just criminally underrated not only by the Hall of Fame but also by the Detroit Tigers, I guess. And, man, I mean, Willie Horton's number is retired by the Tigers and Jack Morris's number is retired by the Tigers. They should probably just get around to retiring Whitaker's number. Alan Trammell's is retired and they were kind of a tandem. So anyway, that's a weird one. I would say, I mean, it's like Jackie Robinson's number is retired everywhere, which is a way of recognizing him. And yet there is also one day a year where you can wear Jackie Robinson's number to honor him. So it's kind of like both ways. It depends on the person and the player and the sentiment. I think both can be ways to honor a

player. So kind of depends on the circumstances. The Blue Jays have only retired two numbers, Halladay and Roberto Alomar. Am I wrong? Is Jose Bautista a candidate to have his uniform number retired? They didn't retire Carlos Delgado's. And Delgado played more, was probably better, and keeps Bautista from being the franchise home run leader and really the franchise other things leader. So I don't know, maybe they're just waiting on Delgado, but just to answer the question, I think everybody should, in this situation, I think everybody is probably acting

appropriately and that acting in the opposite way also would have been fine. I learned a term yesterday that I had never heard and that I like, and that is an interesting concept, which is called adiaphora. Adiaphora is a Greek word that basically means it is an action where it is neither required nor prohibited. And so this is a term that is used in philosophy and theology, and it refers to issues that are sort of, you can go either way. So you don't have a clear, correct answer. And so then you can make your own choice. And I would say that in all three of these situations, either choice would have been perfectly acceptable. Yeah. And I like Josh Harrison's the most.

Yeah, me too. All right. And last one, let's say this is inspired by our most recent episode or one of them. So I'll take this one by Alan, who says, inspired by your conversation about the Ken Griffey Jr. scouting report and Ben's point about how it would have been more useful to know that Jr. was about to decline, I wondered if positive or negative scouting ability is more valuable at the major league level. Put a different way, is it better to have scouts who could accurately tell you prospects that would develop into successful players or scouts who could accurately tell you which players to avoid for whichever reason, injury risk, ballpark effects, mechanics, et cetera. I assume in an ideal world, you'd want both qualities in a scout or an even split of those talents among scouts. But if you had to pick one skill set, which would you prefer?

Well, the default is that a player is not going to be that good. And so if you wanted to win, then getting the good ones would be the way that you would win, right? If you could just, if you could definitely find 20 good players, then you would definitely always be good. And avoiding busts is, is only a small part of a much larger effort. And so avoiding some avoiding busts would not necessarily guarantee that you're going to win.

However, for keeping your job, I feel like it's the opposite. Drafting a player who turns out to be very bad reflects quite poorly on you, and you don't really have any defense against that perception that you have failed in the way that simply failing to find the great player that, by definition, 29 other teams also failed to get, you're in good company there. If you were then limited, if you only had the pool of players who were already in the majors or something, and you could only construct teams from those players, then it would be more valuable to know which of those players was about to decline.

But that is not how baseball works. So you need to keep replenishing your talent and you want someone who can spot players who are not already good. Well, that was a very quick answer. I have one more on here that is also related to one of our most recent conversations about the Atlantic League and robo-umps. So this is from Tim, who says, with the implementation of robo-umps in independent baseball leagues, or at least one, I was wondering if you think a robotic Strike zone would affect the chase rate Of players with high chase rates

Like Javier Baez If the strike zone was no longer affected by human error Would Baez feel less inclined to swing Or is that just his play style Also what would happen to Baez's chase rate If the strike zone were enlarged Would his chase rate decrease Or would it remain the same

Because now he is chasing pitches even farther out of the classic strike zone? So we can at least take the first one of those. Do you think that a robo strike zone would make players any less inclined or more inclined to chase pitches that are not in that strike zone? I don't think that for Baez it would. I think that for a player who's already fairly aggressive, the mindset is that they're swinging at the pitches they think they can hit. And I don't think that Baez swings a lot because he's thinking that he needs to protect. Yeah. something different. And he's willing to live with that. Well, I assume he's willing to live with that trade-off or maybe his, possibly, maybe his brain is just cognitively not able to differentiate in time and he's stuck with this part of his game. But one way or the other, I think that it's much more just about identifying something he thinks he can do damage to

and is less concerned with the count effects of it it in general. I am curious to know Ben, what you think a robo-ump would do because I have been trying for like a year off and on to answer the question in my own head so that I could write about it of who it would benefit hitters or pitchers. And it seems to me that that would be very different depending on the count that in, that the closer and particularly the closer you get to the, to the end counts, the more it would affect things, but it might benefit the pitchers a great deal on say two strikes and benefit batters a great deal on three balls. But overall, I don't know which side of the field would benefit from predictability.

It's a really hard question to answer. And let's assume that we're not changing what the strike zone broadly is. Because I think if you're asking, well, what would a rule book enforcement of the strike zone do as opposed to the sort of somewhat oddly shaped and inconsistent strike zone that umpires seem to aspire to, then that's a different question. But just as far as predictability, if the same pitch was going to be called a ball or a strike every single time based on the precision of a robo-ump, then who would that benefit? Yeah. I really do think that it would make baseball less entertaining. At least that's my feeling about it. It would make it less frustrating at times too, because you'd feel that a certain location is either going to be a strike

or not a strike. And once you mentally understand where those boundaries are, there isn't really any doubt about, well, does this ump have a big or a small zone, or it's just a little different today than it usually is, or this catcher is good or bad. So I think that might be bad from a, at least TV spectator standpoint. And I also think, as you're saying, because the strike zone changes so much based on the count, I don't know exactly why that happens. There are various theories about why umpires call pitches differently on 0-2 and 3-0, but it at least has the effect, whatever the motivation, of making plate appearances more competitive and interesting, I think. making plate appearances more competitive and interesting, I think, because once you get to 3-0, it is easier to get a strike if you're a pitcher. And once you get to 0-2 as a batter, it is harder to take a strike. And so the umpire is essentially lending a helping hand to whoever is currently disadvantaged in that plate appearance and improving the odds that this is going to

become a competitive plate appearance as opposed to one that just ends in the most predictable fashion. But it also makes for longer plate appearances. What an umpire is essentially doing is saying, I don't want this party to end. And so I'm going to keep on doing whatever it takes to move it back to equilibrium so that it can go longer and longer. Yeah, that's true. Generally speaking, there might be even broader ways that that mindset makes the game more interesting. Because like you say, the competitiveness of an at-bat, it doesn't feel like a fait accompli when you fall behind or or get ahead and and so on but um i think that longer at bats for the most part are less interesting than than more at bats you know

like uh i don't know i think that the most do i think that i don't know if i think that i'm thinking about that okay yeah well mean, after O2 counts last year, batters had a 450 OPS. So if you put the robo strike zone in place and it's just as easy for a pitcher to get a called strike on O2 as it ever is, what do you think that OPS goes down to? I probably like significantly, right? So we're now, all right. So we have a 450 OPS after O2. Yeah. And you're telling me that the strike zone is going to be entirely predictable or? Yes. Okay. Are you also telling me that the strike zone is going to be exactly the same as it was on OO? Yes. Okay. All right. Well, on the one hand, the predictability means that a pitcher has less

incentive to try to get a call three inches off the plate because he's just not going to get that call. And so he either has to come in the strike zone or get a swing. And so in that sense, it helps the batter a little bit. And the batter doesn't have to protect as much. He has to protect because he can't trust his own eyes necessarily, his own sense of the strike zone perfectly. But he doesn't have to, if he sees a pitch and thinks, I think that's two inches outside,

but I don't know if the umpire is going to give it to me. So now he can take that pitch if he thinks it's two inches outside. And so that helps the batter. So on two strikes, now is there a way that the predictability works the other way? Well, that's your larger question about who this benefits most. My thinking is along the lines of what you were just saying, that it would help hitters more overall. I'm not confident in that. I'd go back and forth on this, but that is my inclination, that this would help hitters because there would just be so much more predictability. They would still have to worry about their own perception of where a pitch is, but they wouldn't have to worry about what the catcher's doing,

what the umpire's doing. And so they wouldn't have to chase just to protect or to prevent a called strike as often. So they could more confidently, I think, only swing at pitches within the strike zone, which would benefit them. So that's my sense of what would happen. Yeah. Both parties know that umpires are fallible and pitchers use that

knowledge to try to take advantage of it. They will try to get that call. Batters do not because batters have to more or less protect on two strikes. And so a batter's behavior would not change. A batter would, there would be some calls that go the batter's way that they would no longer get, but it wouldn't change their behavior. They're basically not losing a weapon in this game theory. So yeah, I think that you're right. I think that the predictability would take away something from the pitchers that it would not take away from the batters. All right. So, so it helps the batters. And then you asked me what I think that batters OPS would be after O2, if they did not get the merciful umpire who gives them pitches

on the corners as much. And I will say 435. I don't think it would make that big a difference Okay that's not a big difference Alright I think it'd be a bigger Difference but I don't know 400 or something Alright so We will end there Thanks everyone for listening quick announcement I'm passing On from listener John Topolesky

He is organizing the second annual Effectively Wild meetup for anyone in the Washington DC Baltimore area. It's going to be at the Bowie-Baysox game on Saturday, April 13th at 1.35 p.m. Visiting team is the Harrisburg Senators, so it will be a matchup of future Orioles and future Nationals. They had a nice group show up last year for this event, so there is a Facebook page that has been created for it. I will link to that if you're interested, and tickets are $11 for the game. Always happy when Effectively Wild listeners meet up in the wild, whether on purpose or by

chance. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Brad Behearns, Andrew O'Hara, Jameson Weiss, Elisa Gale, and please bear with me here, Gumunder Ingi Gunnarsson. I hope I didn't butcher that too terribly. You can join our Facebook group, which is coming up on 9,000 members, at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. We have more emails to get to because we haven't done an email show in a while, so we've got a bit of a backlog built up.

But please do keep your questions and comments coming for me and Sam and Meg via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you're a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance and we'll be back with two more team preview podcasts later this week one with sam and one with meg and we'll talk to you then Thank you.