Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1389: Too Good to Be Two

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Shohei Ohtani’s hot streak and future as a two-way player, Sam’s decision to listen to all of the Jeff-era EW episodes and his reactions to a few topics from the final few (including a description of Stan Musial’s retirement tour), and two research papers about pitchers’ perceived effort […]

🎵 Oh yeah, Vandenberg Day Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. I just went to Fangraphs, opened up the dropdown, and I said, show me the last seven days of baseball. Who's at the top of that leaderboard for offense? And it is Shohei Otani, who hit for the cycle, perhaps the only cycle I've cared about on Thursday. He's been on fire lately. He made some mechanical changes. He's looking really great. And I think, was it you who asked me earlier in the year when I said I was really looking forward to seeing Otani as a full-time hitter? Yeah. Whether I was worried about whether people would, if he did succeed, suggest that he should just be a hitter full-time?

Yeah. about that. The excellent Joe Sheehan, whose newsletter I subscribe to and recommend and has recently said some nice things about the book, which I appreciate. His latest edition of the newsletter is all about how Shohei Otani has been great as a hitter, and perhaps he should just be a hitter. And it's not worth messing around with him as a pitcher. And love Joe's writing, but I wish he would stop trying to take away two-way Otani from me. Yeah, well, I mean, I wasn't so much worried about people suggesting it as the actual angels actually doing it because, I mean, last year, around this time, I think,

I wrote a piece looking at sort of the math of how good Otani has to be at both things to make it worthwhile for him to do both things. And there comes a point where if he's too good at hitting, then it doesn't make sense for him to pitch just because the pitching cannibalizes his value as a position player more than the other way. And so if, I mean, it almost doesn't matter

how good a pitcher he is, if he's a better hitter and if he's a, you know, like a really an incredible hitter, just because, you know, the way that he is used right now, well, not right now, right now, but the way that he's used in a two-way role costs him all that great defensive value that he would presumably be adding. And it's just really hard to make it up as a you know 60 of the time dh compared to 100 of the time you know right fielder who's presumably a i would think a plus right fielder yeah oh i'm sure he would be given his arm and his speed i mean he could be he could be he was a i think he oh i think i'm remembering didn't he play center field in Japan when he was starting out

before they moved him to DH? I don't know. I'll check. He didn't play in that field, definitely. He played outfield, but I think he might have played center field. Anyway, so yeah. I had a grid of nine possibilities where he's good at hitting, great at hitting, bad at hitting, good at pitching, hitting great at hitting bad at hitting good at pitching

great at pitching bad at pitching and uh the great at hitting ones there was really no way to make the the war math come out to he should be a two-way player if he's great at hitting if i remember this correctly i don't want that to be true he didn't play center in Japan, according to baseball reference. He was mostly right, some left. But yeah, I mean, he's now at 504 career plate appearances. And in that time, since the start of last season, minimum 500 plate appearances, he is the ninth best hitter by WRC Plus in baseball. That's a really good hitter. And that's given an uneven schedule where he was balancing pitching and hitting for much of last year. He had that long layoff in the middle of last year.

He was hitting like three days a week even when he was hitting. And he also had a messed up ligament that perhaps could have affected him. And then he was coming back from Tommy John this year and started sort of slow. So who knows what he could be. Just, you know, full time, no injuries, nothing. So I am happy that he's that good because that was the thing that everyone

doubted when he was coming over, whether he could hit. And now it looks like he's so good at hitting that that might jeopardize his pitching, but he could be so good at pitching too. I want both. Don't take, don't take one away from me.

We only get one of these guys every century. And I didn't think we would ever get one again it's almost like baseball should step in and say this might be better for you angels to just have him hit all the time but better for baseball to have him do this thing no one else can do. kind of even got him a century ago. Babe Ruth was mostly a pitcher who was a really good hitter. And then he was a incredible hitter who had previously pitched, but there was only a very, a fairly short overlap of those two. And in that overlap, his, his pitching got much worse. And he talked about how exhausting it was and how he couldn't do it for a whole year and didn't seem to want to do it. And I mean, it's not probably right to think of Babe Ruth as a two-way player because it was very brief that he was and it wasn't his most successful period. Yeah, that's right. Zach Cram wrote about that for the Ringer last year. I'll link to that. But anyway, I will enjoy him for now. There's nothing we can do for now. He can't pitch, so I'll enjoy his hitting and worry about the rest later.

And hopefully he will want to pitch so much that he will force the Angels to let him pitch, even if it's not the best thing, statistically speaking. Anything on your mind? Yeah, so I've decided that I'm going to go back and listen to all of your episodes. So I've started that project. Great. Starting with the most recent and moving backward. Huh.

Why that way? Partly because I find it a little bit, I don't want, annoying is too strong a word. Tedious isn't quite the right word. But sometimes we get emails from people who reply, who are responding to something that, and then 20 minutes later, we get another email from them going, oh, you already addressed this later in the episode. Yeah. Or sometimes we know that we already addressed it three episodes later. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be responding to things knowing that they were going to change dramatically over the next, you know, 100 episodes or whatever and partly because i i think that there's an enjoyable sort

of uh dramatic irony that comes from knowing the end before you know the beginning uh if that makes sense and so that's probably why i'm doing it backward anyway so i started with uh jeff's farewell very emotional i and uh yeah and then i I moved on to the episode before that when he gives a long, detailed analysis of the state of the Tampa Bay Rays organization. Yeah, that was funny. Yeah, we pushed off the Tampa Bay Rays preview episode to the next one or a little after that just because it felt weird to have him on that one but yeah he uh he kept talking about the race right right up until the end even after he knew he was going to work there i think yeah did you okay so a couple of things that uh i just wanted to bring up from those couple episodes i i don't know if i'm going to do this i don't know

if i'm going to respond to every episode or not but i I just can't. I can't. I have to. I have to on these. All right. So first of all, Jeff talks about how he had been told when he went to Fangraphs, don't read the comments. The commenters are mean. But he actually appreciated the commenters. And if not for the commenters, he would never have realized that he had a bad habit of writing

rambling leads that didn't go anywhere. And I just could not possibly disagree more with those commenters. That was such a beautiful quirk of Jeff's writing. And I missed those leads. I cannot believe he listened to people telling him to get rid of those leads. They were wonderful. Commenters ruined Jeff. They did. And a commenter is not going to go in and say of your article that doesn't have

a unorthodox lead, hey, where's your unorthodox lead? I demand idiosyncratic writing styles from you. And so he's not getting the commenters that say that he should be doing those leads. And I know that some people did not like them. I liked them. They were fantastic. They were distinct. And they were they really sort of, I thought, captured the character of Jeff's writing, which is simultaneously taking the topic extremely seriously while also recognizing the sort of um farcical nature of what we do

caring this much about the thing that we are simultaneously caring this much about uh and so uh so i'm mad at those commenters and i wish that i had known in real time that jeff was letting them burrow into his head like uh like uh like one of those bugs that burrows into your brain yeah it's possible that he just decided he wanted to start writing less and to be finished with his posts sooner because he's doing an awful lot of posts there yeah that could be why i always i always felt that those leads were a way of writing more quickly because by not putting a lot of value and having a traditionally refined lead it was a way of just getting it out of the way. And sometimes he would say in the lead, like basically, this is a lead.

I need to have a lead. This is it. And now we're going to go on to the topic instead of like trying to craft something. Anyway, that's one thing. The other thing is that you guys talked about farewell tours. And you both referred to the original farewell tour that chipper jones had when he got what did he get a rocking chair of broken bats or something yeah surfboard mariano got the rocking chair of broken bats chipper got the surfboard and i wanted to let you know ben

that the original farewell tour was much earlier than that i don't know what the original ones but but i can tell you that it was at least in 1963. So I have here a Great Sports Illustrated article about Stan Musial's farewell tour when he announced his retirement a few months ahead of time. And I'm going to read this paragraph as Musial, Musial, Musial. Do you pronounce it Musial, Musial? I don't know, but I hear that. Yeah, I heard it recently and thought, could it be that I've been getting that? Musial.

I say Musial. Do you say Musial? I do. As Musial made his way around the league for the last time, the old love affair between the ballplayer and the American people began to overflow. Even as it drew to a close, there were times when Stan was in danger of being drowned in treacle. He was heaped with

gifts and honors and awards in san francisco and houston and los angeles in new york and chicago philadelphia and cincinnati moist eyes blinked from coast to coast and then just when the whole retirement threatened to sink beneath a sea of sentiment two things occurred to help people remember that baseball is still baseball and then even stan musial musial plays for the musial for the other side in san francisco alvin dark refused to present a plaque ordered cast for musial by the giant's owner horace stonem quote when the season is over dark said i'd go anywhere for stan musial but i wouldn't give anything to anybody on another team during the season and in philadelphia while stan was walking to the dugout after a home plate ceremony in his honor,

a Philadelphia fan bellowed from the upper deck, Musial, you bum, I hope you strike out every time you come up. Musial smiled. It was somehow comforting to know that Philadelphia fans would never change. This lists, throughout the article, it lists some of the different honors that he was getting in real time.

And so here's an example. An organization called the Vikings, a convivial group, gave a lunch for him at his favorite Hollywood restaurant, Scandia. The Vikings gave Musial a cardinal red rocking chair and a vastly oversized old-fashioned glass on which was embossed Stan the Friend. was embossed Stan the Friend. And one of the things that you get, you sort of get a sense from this that,

you raised the question in this conversation of why players announce in advance, because it feels a little bit presumptuous that you would expect people to recognize your retirement. Or it's just a hassle. Or a hassle. Like Zach Greinke just said about no-hitters. He doesn't want to throw a no-hitter it's just a hassle. Or a hassle. Like Zach Greinke just said about no hitters. He doesn't want to throw a no hitter because it's a hassle. So it seems out of character to think that it would be that. And the sense you get from this article, though, is that when you're

a, I mean, you know, besides being a public figure, ballplayers are people with jobs and they're working, this is their office, and they have sort of normal workplace relationships with people around them. And they want to have the opportunity to actually say goodbye and be said goodbye to in non-public ways. So like there's all these scenes of like, you know, umpires coming across to his clubhouse to say goodbye And, you know, folks from different teams telling them goodbye, you know, privately before games. And in order to say goodbye to someone, you need to know that they're leaving. And in order to know that they're leaving, they have to have told you that they're leaving. So this is a way I think of just simply doing the private business of telling your friends

and your coworkers that, hey, you know, I'm retiring next year. I'll probably have a party, but in the meantime, just so you know, I'm winding things down and I'll be around a little bit. I'll still be checking emails, but, you know, things will be quieting down. And so then everybody can say goodbye. And then once you have that, then there becomes a bit of a public demand

to say goodbye to you in the rocking chair way. I don't think that that's primarily for the player. I think that's more for a combination. I think that's a combination of more for the fans and also a little bit more, I kind of want to say performative for the teams. And in fact, Andrew Baggerly had noted that a couple of weeks ago that some teams have been doing farewells for Bruce Bochy and some teams have not. And Baggerly actually criticized one team for not because Bochy, it was the Nationals, and Bochy had grown up as a Washington Senators fan

and also had some other connection to them. I forget what it was. And so there's a sense that if you underdo it, you might be maybe criticized or that you might be seen as missing the chance. If the other team sets the precedent that this is what we're doing, then it's a snub. So that's, I think, all a little bit a part of it. And can I just, I would also like to read to you, this is totally off the retirement tour topic, but it's a part of this article and it's just so good.

So this is this is OK. All right. This is a conversation, a dialogue between Musial and Joe Garagiola, the broadcaster and old Cardinal teammate burlesquing those players who bemoan the passing of the good old days. of the good old days all right so this is them making fun of players who were a previous generation and who were good old dazing things even then even to stan museal okay like one of the ultimate guys from the good old days yeah was already dealing with good old dazing for people from people older than him all right right, so this is the dialogue. Back then, shouted Musial in mock bitterness, we didn't have any radio or any television or any writers following us around. We just played ball.

That's right, agreed Garagiola. We didn't have any bats. We just played ball. We didn't have any ceremonies at home plate, said Musial. We just played ball and we hit 370. Kids today have it too easy. We just played ball we didn't have any ceremonies at home plate said museal we just played ball and we hit 370 kids today have it too easy we just played ball no batting helmets either snout gargiola we just let our hair grow long and we just played ball that's really good really good right yeah ball players are funny well joke gargiola is pretty

funny yeah yeah that's good that's good fake dialogue i mean if you're doing fake ball player dialogue that's quality stuff i like the uh the 370 that's a there's something like very aware about the 370 you know because it used it was easy to hit 370 at one point and even stan musial was, I only hit 336 and had to deal with guys who were playing against plumbers who were saying that in their days they hit 370 as though 370 was some sort of number in a vacuum. Anyway, last thing, Ben, you guys talked about Johnny Cueto's dead horse. Yes, horses. Cueto's dead horse yes and then you talked about Cece Sabathia's retirement tour and then you merged those two things into the greatest show title in history which is was horsed retirement and I just wanted to know if you were like holding your breath with nervousness about that it's because it's like so it's dark and very good yeah sometimes

it takes me a while to come up with the podcast title so i'm always glad when one just leaps into my mind and i'll never pass up a pun or some play on words so i was pretty happy with that one all right so anyway that's the that's that's. That's Sam listens to old episodes of a podcast that he was not a part of. All right. I like this segment. I don't know if other people will, but a lot of them were listening along, so they'll know what you're talking about. So that's good. This will be fun.

Well, one thing that you will hear the two of us talk about sometime soon when you get to that old episode is players giving more than 100% effort. And I just wanted to tell you something about players giving less than 100% effort. So there's a new study that I was clued into by Craig Goldstein of BP, who I think in turn was clued into it by Jeannie Searle of BP. And this is a study by Glenn Fleissig of the American Sports Medicine Institute. He's been kind of a pioneer in pitching research and many other co-authors also on this paper. And this paper, well, if I read the title, I guess it will kind of give away the conclusion. But it's about what happens when players are told to throw at lower levels of effort. You know, how you're coming back from an injury or something, and it's, well, he was throwing at 75%, throw 50%, 90%. Just take it easy. And, you know, that's like a part of rehab programs. It's like a set progression. He's throwing from flat ground at 75% effort or something. And so this study was trying to determine whether when players are told to throw at 75% effort or whatever, whether they actually throw at 75% effort, which is a good question that I did not know the answer to. And so they took a bunch of guys.

I think they were healthy. And they had them throw from flat ground 120 feet and they told them to throw at these different effort levels and they had MODIS sleeves attached to them. So those are those sensors with accelerometers and gyroscopes in them

that can assess the force and the speeds involved. And I will just read the conclusion here. It says, for every 25% decrease in perceived effort, elbow varus torque, so how much strain is placed on your elbow essentially, only decreased 7%, and velocity only decreased 11%. Thus, when players throw at what they perceive to be reduced effort, their actual throwing metrics do not decrease at the same rate as their perceived exertion. So I thought that was really interesting.

So when they were told to throw at 75% effort, the torque was only reduced to 93% of the maximum, and velocity dropped to 86%. And then when they were told to throw at 50% effort, the elbow strain was still 87% of the max and the velocity was still 78% of max. So this is something that's probably useful for people to know when they're coming up with rehab programs and trying to get players back to the field. If you tell them to throw at a certain level, they're probably going to throw harder than that. But that's kind of an interesting thing because you would think like, well, maybe players are so well-tuned that they actually can calibrate it so that they're somehow giving exactly 75% effort. But that sounds like a difficult thing to do. And sometimes when

you hear someone say, well, I'm taking a little off my fastball or why doesn't he just take a little off so that maybe he'll have better command or he'll be healthy there was actually a another paper that fleissig just did and sent me from another journal where they looked at like the elbow strain according to velocity and even though it's not that telling like cross pitchers like not all hard throwers have more elbow strain than soft throwers because the mechanics are different and everything. In general, higher velocity is higher strain, but that's particularly true for within pitchers. So like if a pitcher is going to throw 95 and you tell him to take a little off, there's

a lot less strain involved there. If he tries to go all out and throw 97 or something, it's way more strain. So in theory, if you're telling someone, well, just take a little off, maybe they can't. Maybe they don't exactly know how to take a little off because you're used to throwing one way and it's hard to calibrate this kind of thing. Hmm. Okay. Not interested.

Well, they did decrease their effort. And the question is, look, I mean, look, if you say throw at 50% effort, I don't know if I know exactly what that means. I don't know if I don't today. Well, I don't know. I don't even know in a in a perfect world what I would think that would mean. Like if you throw 90, does that mean you should be throwing 45?

If someone says throw at 20% effort, you would not be able to get the ball airborne and so could does it exist like it feels to me like this is like where you set your axes in a way and if like you say maybe maybe like the the baseline is like getting a pitch aloft then like that would be like 45. And so then, you know, 75% effort might be 75% of the way between 45 and 95 rather than between 95 and zero. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. There is a minimum. The minimum is not zero really. So I guess if you put it that way, maybe they are kind of 75% between and something but yeah i don't know i did a piece a couple days ago about fastest fastballs each pitcher's fastest fastball so i wanted to talk to andrew miller because one he was one of the the fastest fastballs that interested

me because it was considerably faster than his second fastest fastball. So he averaged 93 last year. His second fastest fastball was like a little over, like it was like 96 and a half. And I think his third fastest was like 95 and a half. And his fastest was like 97 and a half. And so that was a, most people, most pitchers have about three to four miles an hour more for their max than for their average. And some pitchers are five or six and some pitchers are two or three.

But even the ones who are like, like Bartolo Colon was six, but he had- That was shocking. That was, wasn't that fun? Bartolo throws like, he threw 93 something on the pitch. He threw 93.7. Yeah, he was something like 10th from the bottom in average fastball, but 200th from the bottom and max max fastball. But while that is his very fastest, there was a little cluster of those. So he had like six that were kind of like near that. And Miller's was more of an outlier because he really he had the one maybe if you're generous to that were kind of up there and so i asked if like if i if i asked him about that pitch if he remembered anything about that pitch he's like well no i said if you knew it was your fastest would that ring a bell no not really like he

didn't really remember like he remembered throwing he like he he kind of basically remembered like what he was thinking in that plate appearance and he remembers that plate appearance and he remembers throwing that pitch and wanting to throw it past adam jones but he doesn't remember like it coming out of his hand being an outlier and that's that sort of was interesting to me i think that's probably kind of kind of it kind of common so it was like it's not like it was in any way an accident that that was his fastest pitch but it also wasn't like he said all right now i flip the switch this is the i'm using my one yeah i'm throwing my star punch here right yeah max markey wrote about that similar topic for baseball prospectus some years ago

he found as sort of you did in a kind of more anecdotal way, that guys will throw harder against better pitchers, which you would expect. And you found that everyone seems to throw their peak fastball against Bryce Harper more so than any other hitter, which seemed like probably too much to be random, which is interesting. Well, and number two was Manny Machado, which felt like kind of Manny Machado is in some ways like they're sort of a genre, those two. Yeah, that's true. And I mean, Harper's not the best hitter even close to,

so you shouldn't save your best fastball for Bryce Harper, but he is perceived to be better or perceived to be, I don't know, someone you really want to get out. And so you reach back and throw a little harder, but that may or may not be beneficial to you. Yeah, I don't know, someone you really want to get out. And so you reach back and throw a little harder, but that may or may not be beneficial to you. Yeah, I was surprised. So I was surprised writing that by two things. One is I thought it was going to be a lot more random than it was.

I thought that a large number of these pitches, most of them were just going to be whatever fastballs, like that they would be distributed among all play roughly equally and they were not they were they were outliers in and they um they were used in a way that was was very notable like there were real trends when you group them together as a cohort so that was one thing but the other thing was how little difference in results there were compared to regular fastballs there was a little bit of difference but i expected lots of whiffs and really wild and it was only slightly wild and

only slightly more whiffs yeah and both of those things to be honest both of those things could potentially be explained by other factors because these pitches are not thrown randomly, but in particular situations and the situations themselves might cause slightly more whiffs and slightly more balls or, you know, maybe not. I'm just sort of hypothesizing, but there wasn't a big difference. And so now I've just given away all the answers that I asked in this question and tried to tease you along In the article, now you know But still read the article Yep, I'll link to it

Alright, we should answer a few emails Before we just talk for this entire episode So this question comes from Stuart He says, as someone who's both an avid Red Sox fan And casual soccer fan I wanted to write about the upcoming Red Sox Home games in London against the Yankees The games are taking place in London Stadium A multi-purpose facility built for the Olympic Games that has since become home to West Ham United.

Reviews of it as a soccer stadium seem to be that it lacks character, but it's modern and a conventionally sized baseball field can fit in it. Here's what gets me. There are a number of stadiums in England that seem like kindred spirits of Fenway, and one of them is even owned by Fenway Sports Group. If the Red Sox have to play quote-unquote home games in England, why not play them at Sox sports brethren Liverpool FC's home and field? Soccer stadiums have been used for baseball before, even including Liverpool's other historic stadium, Everton's Goodison Park. The downside, apart from being outside of London Or is it worth it to pick a historic Local venue that calls for warped Outfield dimensions

Hmm better for Better for me Well better for Maybe inflaming the passions Of the fan base getting people interested In a sport in a territory where It's not the primary sport. I think it's a good question because do you want to showcase baseball to its best advantage or

in its typical guise, or do you want to present it in a place where people are comfortable already and they have some attachment to it? And so porting baseball into that place that they already have some fondness for may make them more receptive to baseball, or maybe they could more easily imagine themselves watching baseball if it's taking place in a stadium where they already watch sports. Well, imagine the reverse. Imagine that there was going to be a big cricket tournament and you were going to go to it. And it could be in either like it could be on some, like let's say it could be, I don't know, what does a cricket pitch look like? What shape is it? It's like a big blob in my head.

I've only seen cricket played on a big flat field that was like kind of rectangular. And so then you'd think you'd play it on like big flat field that was like kind of rectangular and it was and so then you'd think you'd you'd play it on like a soccer field on a soccer pitch or which i've never been to a soccer field like i've never been to a soccer stadium i don't know where am i going with this or i was gonna say or you could play it in a in baseball stadium that i'm very comfortable in and that i've been to a bunch and i know know where the good concessions are, but it would be strangely shapen and I would not even know that it was strangely shaped because I don't know. I'm not feeling like this hypothetical rephrasing of the question is getting me any closer to an answer. I feel like it's actually given me no clarity at

all. So 230 though. Yeah, that's pretty extreme. 230 is really extreme. Yeah. So I don't know. The thing about it is, do you feel like if you want to ask, well, what would be more interesting for an American audience watching games on TV? Or what would be more pleasing for an American audience watching games on TV? That would be a different question than what would be better for a London audience that presumably doesn't, for the most part, doesn't know that much about baseball, hasn't watched that much baseball, and for whom a 230-foot home run would not seem like a travesty or strange in any way, because for all they know, that's how baseball is played. And so in that sense, you'd say you'd say well yeah you'd go to the

venue where people um already have more attachment where they're going to be more comfortable and you don't really worry about how much the game hues to traditional play because nothing is going to seem discordant to people who don't have baked in baselines. But I don't think that is the purpose of these games primarily. I think that for the most part, Major League Baseball is trying to preserve the integrity of their championship season as much as possible

while experimenting a little bit with a new market and a new locale. And there's a small sacrifice to exposing the game to another continent, but they're not willing to make a... I don't think they really want to make a big sacrifice. I don't think that they want to have the league's home run champ be determined by the eight home runs that someone hits

over the 230-foot wall over a three-game series. Yeah, that's a good point. This is not an exhibition series, so you don't want to compromise the competition and the play. I think when you're trying to introduce a sport to a new audience, you want to meet those people on their territory as much as you can. You want to try to show them how it could fit into their lives. So I wouldn't want MLB to be like, well, you have to build us a baseball stadium or we won't come and play for you. I think that we should play in the preexisting structures and make the best of it. In this case, though,

we're talking about a scenario where there already is a stadium where people go to see matches all the time. So London Stadium is, I mean, that's already the home of a soccer team here. And we're just talking about the difference between that kind of blander facility and one with more history. And I don't think that's really that important a consideration because this is a place where people there go to see sporting events all the time. They feel comfortable. I don't know that putting it in Anfield or some other historic place would make them that much more receptive to baseball. And if it distorts the true nature of baseball, I don't think that's worth the benefit. So because there is a natural home for it where you wouldn't have to have a 230-foot outfield fence, that I think probably just makes sense to have it in London Stadium. But if there were no London Stadium, if it were like the difference between playing an infield and like forcing them to build a ball field somewhere or something, then I would say just compromise. And I don't mean that in a dismissive rhetorical sense. I don't actually know what the point of this is. Why are they in London? Just to introduce the game to an international audience.

I mean, but it's not like Europe is unaware of baseball. So they're aware of it it they know what baseball is baseball's been a a thing that they've played in the colonies forever they so is the and and so like it's not like it makes sense for instance to play games in uh baseball uh in countries where baseball is a thing because then there there's sort of a, it's a diplomatic outreach. It's a way of saying like, we're all in the same, you know, we're all part of the same sport. We're all part of the same ecosystem. And, you know, we're, we would like to have a relationship with you. You're our sister city. It's a little, it's a different thing when you go to a country that has its sports that isn't probably in any real way interested in taking yours.

And so I don't know if they're trying to convince Londoners to pick up baseball or if they're just trying to sell 100,000 tickets for two games or whatever, however many games they're playing. And the point of it is to get the money right there. And then like, it makes a little bit more sense to have football because football play in London, because football is a sport that is not already international. It is an American sport. And at some point you might think, Hey, let's try to spread this around the world. But baseball is already an international sport. And the countries that don't play it presumably have chosen not to. They've had their chance. That's not their sport. They play similar sports instead. And so it feels like it's not particularly ripe for evangelism or for, I don't know, whatever you call it, missionary outreach of this sort.

So like, again, that's what I'm saying is I don't know what the goal is. I don't know if the goal is to convince Londoners who are at the game that this is a great sport and that they should host more baseball games, or if it's that they think that Great Britain is going to watch these games on TV because they're happening in their country, even though baseball games are already, you can already watch them if you want to, just being played in other countries. Like you don't have to be in London to watch a game that's being played in London and the game doesn't have to be played in London to watch it if you live in London already.

So I'm kind of confused of just what the outreach is here. london already so i'm kind of confused of just what the the outreach is here and i kind of feel like the point of it is actually to get me to watch it to get americans to watch it because this is something a little different in which case then it's then it becomes a different question if the actual audience is americans then it's a little bit of a different yeah that's a different answer potentially but i think it could be both. I think even though baseball is an international sport, it's not everywhere. And I don't know that you can say that's like other countries have rejected it. I think maybe they just haven't had the outreach yet.

At some point, it spread in some way because it was exported. And maybe there really hasn't been an attempt to export it. So, I mean, those games are going to be well attended. Obviously, there are a lot of expats there who will go. And there's a small but thriving British baseball community, from what I understand and know of the Internet. So those people will be happy. And I think it's a little different even if you know that the sport exists, if the sport says you are important to us

and we want you to like us and we're coming to to your backyard you don't have to come meet us we'll come to you and time zone is an obstacle for usually watching baseball in england and so we'll be on your time zone and not only are we coming but we're bringing our our fabled rivalry the yankees and the red sox we're not giving you marlins versus i don't know rays or something so this is going to be the marquee matchup and and i think it's good i don't know that england will be the the new japan or something in terms of liking baseball but it can't be bad to to spread it around and we can still watch those games and follow them.

Yeah, what would you do if you were the Major League Baseball executive in charge of growth in Europe? What would you do? Well, I'd probably try to foster participation among amateurs. And I know there are various amateur baseball programs in a bunch of European countries. I know there are various amateur baseball programs in a bunch of European countries. So I guess I'd send over coaches and equipment and try to get kids interested in the game probably and hope that they grow up to want to keep playing and watching baseball. Yeah, I think that's what I'd do too. I think that's probably where I would go more than this. But again, I don't know enough about the motives. I don't know enough about the current business model to say what the point is here or how successful it is so i'm not trying to dismiss

it in any way okay all right chris c says i was listening to a recent podcast where ben and sam discussed the potential merits of switching pitchers during an at-bat it led me to think about why teams don't try new things that may give them a competitive advantage down the line could be ineffective and lead to upset players, managers, less trust in the future, etc. However, I'm sure other teams wouldn't mind better observing new tactics to see their effectiveness. This led me to an odd idea. Could a competitive team try to outsource trials of new tactics to a non-competitive team? For example, what if the Astros offered a mid-tier prospect to the Marlins to try out switching pitchers mid at bat? This may seem like it'd be collusion,

but hypothetically, what would teams pay to have a half season of trying out new tactics without any ramifications for their own team? Well, this would make a lot more sense if you didn't already have eight teams under your aegegis i mean it just feels like the real question is how come we're not how come we don't see more of this in the minor leagues it does happen from time to time um you know like the the astros and the piggybacking starters is an example that for instance uh got a lot of attention the dodgers, it was kind of a brief little moment where the Dodgers got attention for having a lot of their minor leaguers playing out of position or not exactly out of position, but playing a lot of different positions and also batting in a lot of different parts of

the batting order so that they would get used to being ballplayers instead of seeing themselves as a particular type of hitter at a particular position. So things like that have been experiments that have been used in the minor league level. But you would think that if you wanted to try something like this, it would make a lot more sense to use players who are already working for you and to do it at games that are already widely appreciated to be developmental in nature, more than purely competitive. And you would be absolutely roasted, both you and the team that you were colluding with, if you were to try this in the major leagues. Yeah. And plus, everyone can see what happens.

So all the other teams are getting really the same insight that you are, or at least the one team that you're outsourcing it to is. So you're not really getting any information advantage there. So I agree that there are better ways that you could do this. Or you could perhaps, in the way that MLB is currently, maybe have like a sister team in the independent leagues where you have some sort of relationship like when we uh were doing the stoppers thing there was a team that we were talking to right about potentially having the stoppers be like a laboratory for that team that's right and it didn't happen but there was a conversation about that so you could do that kind of thing so i think

there are places where you wouldn't have to worry quite as much about the ramifications and you could kind of keep the insights secret. So that would make more sense. All right. Question from Amelia via Anton. Anton is sending a question from his daughter, Amelia. Amelia says, will we ever have another universally retired number like Jackie Robinson's? What could a current player do to make that happen? Well, so that is two questions, because we could have a universally retired number, and it might not be a current player at all. Yes.

I mean, it seems to me that more likely than any other scenario is that the movement that the sometimes movement to get Roberto Clemente's number retired would be adopted more likely than anything that I could imagine, you know, Blake Snell doing. But or Ian Snell, for that matter, who was mentioned in the second to last episode of the Jeff years. I loved Ian Snell. Remember Ian Snell? for that matter, who was mentioned in the second to last episode of the Jeff Years. I loved Ian Snell. Remember Ian Snell? I do, yeah. I don't know if I loved him, but yeah. Ian Snell had a year with Pittsburgh where he, no, I guess he didn't. What did he have, a start?

Did he have a start? He had a crazy start where he had like 13 strikeouts and no walks or something like that. He had one of those things. And I don't know. I just always thought. He had a good year with the Pirates. Yeah, he did have a good year. I feel like I remember Ian Snell being, well, did he though?

Yeah. Well, it was pretty good. For some reason, I remember thinking Ian Snell was a good breakout candidate. That's what I remember. Maybe based on one start. All right. So let's put... So I don't know.

Do you want to... I don't know if you have anything to say about the Clemente situation or the Clemente idea, but we could also just talk about the more abstract current player thinking that Emilio wanted to do. Yeah, I mean, current player, I don't know. I mean, I think the first woman in Major League Baseball, if there's a Ginny Baker scenario, that would be a very natural fit, I think. Possibly the first publicly gay player, first player to come out. I don't know. I mean, it has to be a trailblazer obviously someone who likes breaks down barriers

because uh they don't hand out these retired everywhere numbers very easily so yeah it took and it took what 50 years before they retired jackie robinson's number yeah so it's not like you can just be really great or really well loved and that would do do it. You'd have to, can't even think of other than like being the first to, to be a person who was that kind of person who was in the majors. I don't know what else you could do. And it's, you know, it's in,

in some ways it's hard because Jackie Robinson came along at a time when baseball was such a huge part of culture, Jackie Robinson came along at a time when baseball was such a huge part of culture, such a huge part of the world that what he accomplished was in no way limited to baseball, that his role in society was massive, that he is one of the defining, in a lot of ways, he is one of the defining political actors, historical figures of the 20th century. And baseball is no longer probably in that part of the culture. So it's probably hard to imagine anything that you could do in baseball right now that would have you in general textbooks 75 years from now, the way that Jackie Robinson

absolutely is. And so that might be an obstacle on the other hand now that jackie robinson's number is retired universally there's that precedent and so uh it might not be as difficult to get the momentum to have a number retired as as it was for for jackie robinson yeah that's all i can think of shohei otani first true two-way player probably not uh is yeah i mean yeah is there there yeah there has to be some cultural social relevance to your career you have to be an inspiring figure boundary breaker in some way and so there are only so many options that are coming to my mind Yeah, I will update you If I think of something later

It's okay that we can't think of many Because there probably shouldn't be many So it should be a rare honor So that's alright Okay, do you have a stat blast? I sure do Okay They'll take a data set Sorted by something like ERA- or OBS I sure do. Okay. Here's to Daystablast

So my friend Mike Who put together the 2015 Pacific Association Simulation thing You know, which I don't Have you mentioned that on here? No, I posted it in the Facebook group Alright, so

Anyways, my friend Mike He's currently simulating The 2015 Pacific Association season By By the way, this is not related to the stat blast, but he sent me an email yesterday letting me know that he had brought Sean Conroy in to the middle of the fifth inning with the bases loaded, even though he had been used for like 76 pitches the day before and Conroy got out of it. All yeah Paul also by the way has an ERA of about three in this sim excellent oh man I I would love to live that I would love to live another season of Paul and Taylor Eads yes to see because I do still feel like definitely they could in the right year both of those could have turned out to be stars in our league. Anyway, Mike listened to your conversation,

our conversation about Clay Bellinger signing, giving you your first autograph. And he told me that his first autograph was Roy Smalley. Roy Smalley. And he brought this up because he's been thinking a lot about Roy Smalley recently in relation to Cody Bellinger. And the reason is that in 1979, Roy Smalley was incredible. I don't know how much you know about Smalley, but Smalley was drafted five times. This was back in the days where there was a draft in June and then a secondary draft in January for people who I think maybe didn't sign or didn't

declare or something. They somehow were re-eligible in January. So Smalley was drafted five times, including first overall in the 1974 January phase of the draft. He was the nephew of Gene Mock and the son of Roy Smalley, the 1940s shortstop. And so he had a lot of reason to think that he'd be really good. In 1978, he was really good. He had a six-war season. And then in 1979, everything came together. And so he was hitting.408 on May 20th, which I believe is one day earlier than Cody Bellinger lost his 400 this

year. But he even after that kept raking. He was hitting 392 on June 1st with, by the way, a ton of power. And what's the date today, Ben? Today is June 14th. On June 14th of that year, he was hitting 376, 450, 575, which is remarkably similar to Bellinger, except with a little bit less power, but that's not surprising. It was 1979, and this is 2019, and the baseball is flying. Smalley was a shortstop. He was rated as a little bit above average shortstop for the years before that and the years after that, so he was probably a pretty good defensive shortstop. I don't know what his war is, was at the time, but it was probably comparable to Bellinger's. And he hit, so I gave you the, on June 14th and, and then he kept hitting basically until July 4th when he more or less like peaked. He had a higher, he had higher numbers earlier in the year, but

if you're just going like the peak of his season, when he had the biggest sample of the best stats, it would probably be July 4th. He went two for four with the Homer and an intentional walk. And at that point he was hitting 372, 452, 595 with 12 sacrifice punts, by the way. And, and then, and then he just, then he, then the way. And then he just stopped. That was it. He went 0 for 4 the next day. And his OPS dropped 68 of the final 84 days of the season.

He was hitting 372 on July 4th. He was hitting 299 by August 27th and he wasn't done. He ended up at 271. He went from 372 on July 4th to 271 at the end of the year. His OPS dropped from 1046 to 794.

He was still at a good year. Still at a really good year. Four and a half war season. Got MVP votes and so on. But, you know, he was Bellinger-esque, and he seemed like a great ball player already, and then he did that. And so Mike, for cruel reasons, has taken to thinking, well, nothing is guaranteed, and Cody Bellinger could be exactly as bad as as roy smalley going forward

and uh that's a fine way of it's a it's a harsh way of viewing the world but it basically is saying that no more is guaranteed to you than has been guaranteed to the very worst precedent that has ever come before and so i wanted to see if Roy Smalley is in fact the worst precedent, the worst precedent of a first half deteriorating into a second half. And so I looked at T OPS plus, which is a player's OPS in the split compared to his OPS overall. And Smalley's first half in 1979 is in fact the, I think it's the fifth best T OPS plus ever with some minimum number of plate appearances, but it's not the best. It's not even really close to the best best so the best is actually brennan bosh and brennan bosh in 2010 as a rookie came up and in the first half he hit 342 397 593 i mean i kind of remember that i remember brennan bosh being a rookie and hitting and not really he wasn't supposed to be that great i don't think at the time and so it was like wow

and then he he did much worse after that and then he settled into a career that didn't last that long and wasn't that distinguished but had some moments but bosh's tops plus was 167 he hit 163, 237, 222 in the second half. So he went from almost 1,000 OPS to 450 in the second half. And so we're, of course, not at the end of the first half yet for Bellinger. But if we take Mike's pessimistic assumption that whatever the worst of us could do, all of us could do, and that Brennan Bosch's second half collapse is within the range of what Cody Bellinger could do, all of us could do, and that Brennan Bosch's second half collapse is within the range of what Cody Bellinger could do, then we could imagine Cody Bellinger hitting in the second half as bad as this. If he did the same thing that Brennan Bosch did, Cody Bellinger would have an on-base

percentage of 268 in the second half, a slugging percentage of 265 in the second half a slugging percentage of 265 in the second half and he would still end up with an ops of the with a for the season with an on base percentage of about 365 and a slugging percentage of about 485 which is actually better than he did last year so even if he boshed it he would he would still end up better than he was last year which is pretty impressive but so but that's not my point that's not actually my stat blast i reject i reject wholeheartedly mike and his his presumptions i believe that we need to consider the alternate which is that whatever the best of us has ever done, so may we all. And so I looked for who had the most improvement in the second half. And the most improvement in the second half ever was Casey Stengel in 1915.

Casey Stengel, his first half TOPS plus was 42. So I like to imagine that Cody Bellinger could also end up with a first half t ops plus of 42 which would mean which of course would mean that he would have to be much better in the second half how much better to match casey stangle well he would have in this scenario a slugging percentage of 1345 and an on base percentage of 787 it is in my opinion just as likely as the brennan bosh one so uh so that's what we have possibly to look forward to cody bellinger 787 on base percentage and 1345 slugging percentage in the second half to give him a TOPS plus in the first half of 40, whatever I said. And just to end this, I was going to go try to find somebody in some split

that would be comparable to Cody Bellinger, but I got waylaid by this totally unrelated thing in 2000 mark mcguire reached 37 three and one counts okay okay reached three and one 37 times i should actually check this it's possible that i misread this hang on a second i think this is right if it's not then you don't even have to hear it uh nope i got it right all right so he reached 37 three one counts after those 37, three, one counts. So this is not on three, one, this is after three, one. So the going forward from those 37, 37, three, one counts. He made three outs. Wow. Not even three. Oh, these aren't even intentional walks, right? Because it would make sense. He got intentionally walked a lot.

So after 3-0, he was pretty good. None of these were even intentional walks. So 37 3-1 counts. He went on to walk 31 times, homer three times, and make three outs. He had a 500, 919, 2000 slash line in 37 after after 37-31 counts. Mark McGuire, I don't know how much you remember his final, the sort of late stage, bad foot Mark McGuire, where he could hardly play,

but Tony LaRusso would have him pinch hit in the first inning, and that would be his whole game. He would strike out a lot, but he would hit a lot of home runs anyway so Mark McGuire in 1998 hit 70 home runs and he did that in 681 plate appearances so 681 in his final two seasons his hobbled seasons he had 685 plate appearances so basically exactly the same number of plate appearances and he hit 61 home runs in his final two seasons. Now, of course, you know why, but he hit 61 home runs in the equivalent of a full season and then he quit. Then he walked away. And do you remember his

retirement? No, I did not remember this either, but this is the anti Stan Musial Musial. Not only did he not have a retirement tour, he announced his retirement by fax to ESPN and then went on vacation before the Cardinals could call him. So there's all these, basically he faxed his retirement statement that said the Cardinals and I agreed on a two-year extension last spring, but I've decided I wouldn't be worth it. So I'm going to retire instead. And then ESPN went to the Cardinals and they're like, that's really weird. We have not heard anything. They were kind of like Tony La Russa. I would believe he would have told the Cardinals first. The guy is a first-class guy. I find it hard to believe he wouldn't call the owners or Walt Jockety first,

but he didn't. He heard about the facts from ESPN, and the quotes from the Cardinals are all, we're trying to find Mark. He's in Mexico. We haven't talked to him yet. We'll let you know. And that's weird.

Wow. What a way to go out. Yeah. So anyway, that's Mark McG what a way to go out yeah uh so anyway that's mark mcguire um after three one count all right well i'm glad you finally got a tops plus into one of your stat class because i'd seen some people lamenting the lack of tops plus oh i think there were lots of tops plus play indexes back in the past maybe so probably the past, yeah. Probably, yeah. All right, good. In fact, we did a whole, I think we did an,

I think I did a play index on the best TOPS pluses for every split. So like what's the highest anybody ever did in any count? What's the highest anybody ever did in any scenario? And some, I don't remember what the what the goal that was but it was looking at things like that anyway go ahead okay can i do one more quick one sure all right so this one comes from jake m while traveling for work i was able to go to a portland sea dogs game the double a affiliate of the boston red sox and previously

of the florida marlins in their stadium they had a wall dedicated to Seadogs Hall of Famers, which was ultimately a list of alumni with success in the majors. The wall included players like Mookie Betts, Andrew Penitenti, Dustin Pedroia, etc. This made me think, if there were a true minor league baseball Hall of Fame, who would be those players that had great careers and or seasons in the minors are there any players who had a minor league season with a war similar to major league players similarly are there lifelong minors players with a very high career war without extended time in the majors so i won't exactly answer this i don't have minor league career war but it is kind of an interesting

philosophical question about what a minor league baseball Hall of Fame would look like. I believe there still isn't one. There are many leagues that have their own Hall of Fames, minor leagues. There are, I'm sure, many teams that have their own minor leagues. And there's an article I'll link to when the Southern League got a Hall of Fame. This was from MILB.com in 2015. And they talked to various people who were involved in making Minor League Hall of Fames. And it sounds like they just kind of left it up to each team to decide who's nominated or how you decide whom to induct. And so the question is, do you just want to do what the Seadogs did, which is basically like guys who graduated and went on to big careers and brought honor to your minor league affiliate by having passed through on their way to bigger and better things and probably like dominated the league while they were there?

career value for that league or that team, even if they never got to the majors or didn't really make it, which is, I don't know which I would say, because on the one hand, no one aspires to be in a minor league hall of fame because they couldn't make the majors and they just got stuck in the minors. But on the other hand, it's, I don't know which hand I'm on now, but it is an accomplishment to be recognized if you are great in that league so i think like mike hessman is in the triple a hall of fame or international league hall of fame so he's you know the career minor league home run leader who never had much of a career in the majors so i think there should be room for the hessmans of the world yeah it's uh there's something sort of cruel about baseball only recognizing those that make it to the top we don't like we many of us are able to get recognition in our careers in

our lives in the the worlds that we live in even though the worlds we live in are not the very top of our possible profession like there's like you can get recognized a lot of ways and it's that's great about the world like my uh i well no anyway what was i gonna say who knows you'll never know uh but in baseball we act like, I mean, not we, there is a sadness to Mike Hessman's career that is a little bit unfortunate. Mike Hessman played a very long time at the second highest level of baseball in the United States against a lot of great players and trying to make that ambiguous. Well, we can't help but make it ambiguous.

And that's a little bit sad. But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that you do have to decide. Like, are you going to put someone in the Hall of Fame based on what they did not in your league, in which case you end up with Mookie Betts and Dustin Pedroia? Or are you going to put them in the league based on what they did in the Hall of Fame,

based on what they did in the Hall of Fame, based on what they did in your league, and risk turning it into a spotlight on the players' kind of limitations. Like, ah, you only got here, and then you got stuck here. And I don't know. I mean, given the way that we treat minor leagues, given the emphasis on constantly moving up, given the feeling that it is all subservient to what happens to the major leagues, I almost feel like you can't have a Hall of Fame. You just need to not do it. You just need to, like, that's not what we're going to do. Or maybe not for players, you know, have it for executives or managers or owners or whatever. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Because otherwise, yeah, it's like your goal as a player is to spend as little time in that league as possible. So you don't want to be in the hall of fame. And it's almost like it comes off as like needy or something. If,

if you're like the minor league level that this guy was at for a season or something, and he couldn't wait to get out of there and you're like, he's our Hall of Famer. He didn't want to be in your league. their league. So maybe if you just said like, well, in a sense, like you're a minor league Hall of Famer if you leave, if you graduate and you get to the big league. So we're not going to count those guys. We're just going to count the guys who accumulated the most value for their teams in this league. And I think if I were one of those guys, I'd still want to be in that Hall of Fame. I mean, it would be a reminder of the fact that you got stuck there and you never got to make it to the next level for long, but I'd still want to be recognized for what I accomplished at that level, I think.

So, yeah. So, have a Hessman Hall of Fame. That's fine. Okay. All right. But I don't think you can merge them, though. It's weird if you have a Hessman Hall of Fame and a Mookie Betts Hall of Fame. Unless, like, if you like the most extraordinary minor league season ever, maybe you could get in for a single season, even if you got promoted and left. But you just like laid waste to the league and you set every single season record in that league in that year.

Then I could see maybe putting you in there. It's a jumble. It would be a weird Hall of Fame for sure. Yes. And especially the weird thing about putting Hessman in there is that you kind of have to rename it. Don't you have to make it like the Hall of Accomplishment or something? Because it's very definitely not fame that you're getting. Yeah, that's true. Yeah okay so we will talk next week that will do it for today and for this week final pre-father's day

reminder you can go get my book the MVP machine how baseball's new nonconformists are using data to build better players it does make a fine father's day gift not that it needs to be a father's day gift but go check it out pick it up I think you'll enjoy it and if you do please leave us a review on Amazon

and Goodreads. That really helps us out. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going. Emily Thompson, Sam Hutchins, Jeremy Hayton, Doug Barrett,

and Jimmy Babowski. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Yeah, I'm digging into the Ben Lindbergh,

Travis Sawchuk, MVP machine book. It's a great read. I think it'll be this generation's money ball. And Turner is mentioned very early on in the book. One of the themes of it, you know, in the money ball era, 10, 15 years ago, the advantage was procuring undervalued talent. Guys who took walks at that time were undervalued. Well, you know, getting those players is not an advantage anymore because everybody's trying to get those guys. And they are being valued properly.

So the next thing, when you talk analytics, is all the technology, which is changing rapidly, and the idea of developing players.