Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1519: Fauxpening Day

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about which types of old games they would want to rewatch, Noah Syndergaard’s Tommy John surgery, and how short is too short for a regular season, then answer listener emails about whether the 2020 title will be tainted by a shortened season, whether MLB should skip the regular season […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1519 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Edmund Berg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hi, Ben. Happy what would have been opening day. Not that happy. Unhappy what would have been opening day. But there is going to be a lot of baseball on TV and on various other platforms. I don't know whether you have looked at the list of games that are going to be re-aired. So MLB Network is doing a marathon of memorable opening day games, five different games that will be airing throughout the day. And then various other outlets, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, other places, there will be games on.

Every team will have a game that their fans can watch somewhere or other at some point during the day. I'll link to the schedule for those who haven't seen it. And it's a lot of memorable games and famous games. And a lot of them are identified by the milestone, the thing that happened in that game, the Felix perfect game, let's say, or sometimes it's just a playoff game. This is ALCS game seven or whatever, or it was going to be a win and not know that it was this memorable game that you are tuning in explicitly to see. And I wondered whether you would agree with that or whether that would even be a common opinion, because I would think most people probably like the idea of watching because they know that it is a certain famous game. But on the other hand, they know exactly what happens and how it ends. And maybe they don't remember all the details, but close enough.

And I do kind of like the idea of just getting a random game. The downside is you might not know that it's a good game. But if you told me it's a good game, but I'm not telling you which one and I'm not telling you who wins, that is pretty appealing. him, but I'm not telling you which one and I'm not telling you who wins. That is pretty appealing. Yeah. I mean, you know, I would just say that everybody's going to have a very different experience with this. I think everyone temperamentally is going to have different tastes in this sort of rewatch. And I'm, I've been polluted by years of having to draw content out of baseball. I've watched, I've probably watched as much baseball that was rewatch or that was not live as I have watched live baseball over the last couple of years, because you spend

a lot of time watching games that you are writing about that have already happened or watching various aspects of a player's play that it might come from a game two years earlier. And so I would want probably to watch games that I knew why I was watching it so that I would know what to be looking for. But that's a very specific set of needs that most people don't encounter. I think in theory, I definitely would back Craig's position. And I've had the same thought that finding games that people don't know the outcome of is better. Now, the nice thing is that the world is really limitless in that respect. I mean, I couldn't tell you who won most games in the 2018 World Series. Well, I guess I could

because it was a five game series. So I can tell you who won 80% of them. But for the most part, I don't think that I would quickly identify who won most of this year's NLCS and ALCS games, for instance, besides knowing who won the series. Ultimately, at some point in the last couple of weeks, you made a reference to the sixth game of the World Series, and I could not for the life of me remember which one that was this year. So I think you have, as long as it's not a perfect game, you have almost all of baseball history to work with. There are very few games that aren't either perfect games or decisive games in series that I think most people know right away what they were. Now you might figure it out as you go. So that was me series that I think most people know right away what they were. Now you might figure it out as you go. So that was me saying that I think it's Craig. However, temperamentally,

I will tell you this, that none of it is exactly going to fool me. Even if I'm watching a game that is just taped, if I recorded it, if I T-voted it, or if I'm watching it the next morning on MLB TV and I saved it and I kept myself from getting spoiled and I watch it later, I still can't feel the same suspense of knowing that it's live. Yeah. So in this long answer is that I think that if your goal is suspense, Craig is right, but your ceiling on suspense is low enough on an old game that it's probably better to have a game where uh you in a sense know that you're you know which plot points you're looking for which

narrative beats you're looking for there's so there's a lot of uh there's research out there that shows that people really like watching reruns, that in fact, people in a lot of cases enjoy reruns more than seeing the show the first time if it's something like, you know, Friends or Law and Order, because there's something very comforting about seeing the rhythm of plot points that you are expecting. And so if you are allowing that you're watching a game that is far, far, far removed from any real world stakes anymore yeah i you might as well watch something i think i've answered both ways yeah good job so i have answered okay so yeah just it just depends if you think you're if you're looking for suspense then i think

obviously craig is correct uh but i would say that you should prepare to be disappointed by how little suspense you feel and therefore maybe seek out the game that is known, that is well known for probably a very good reason. Yeah, I don't know that a perfect game would really do it for me. A lot of these are perfect games, no hitters. There are multiple Verlander no hitters here. There's the Burley perfect game. There's Felix. And that's just the ultimate example of just well there's no

really losing something live because there's not even a batter by batter suspense because you already know how every at bat is going to end and if you just want to see the plays that are made then you could watch a condensed game if you're really a student of pitching and you want to just watch you know burley break down every batter then it depends how close you're going to watch it, I guess, is part of it. I watched, I rewatched a game today. It was the first baseball that I had watched since the season was suspended and I enjoyed it. I watched the game one of the NLDS from 2010, which I've, which I cited in an email yesterday to somebody as my favorite or my most memorable game of recent history. And it was good. I enjoyed it. That was the game that if anybody wants spoilers, that was

the game that Tim Lincecum struck out 14 and had something like 30 swinging strikes and threw a complete game and won one to nothing. Yeah, I think I might enjoy a really dominant performance. Yeah, even more so than a no hitter or perfect game, which often are dominant performances, but not always. And when you don't have that suspense of, is he going to do it? Is he going to do this thing? Then maybe you can just enjoy how good this player is. And wow, he's getting lots of strikeouts. That's fun to watch. And I don't know, I haven't rewatched any full games, so clearly it's not something that has that much of an appeal for me, at least now. Maybe a few more weeks, a couple more months, we'll see if I start feeling the

pull. But we talked last week about rereading things and re-experiencing things, and I tend not to do that much of that. I don't do that much rereading or re-watching or replaying because there are just always so many new things that I have my eye drawn toward. There are certain things I love and go back to again and again, like, I don't know, Seinfeld or Star Wars or Freaks and Geeks or something. I'll rewatch those. But a sporting event just isn't really the same for me, I don't think. But I do think I'm more attracted to the older games. The older it is, the more I want to watch it. Just kind of looking at this list, like hearing that they're going to be re-airing the A's

20th straight win in 2002. That's something that I could see myself watching more so than most of the things on this list, just because I haven't seen those players in a long time. I haven't seen a 2002 baseball broadcast since 2002. And unlike a lot of these other games, which I could just watch anytime, like, you know, all the games since 2009 are on YouTube if they aren't on MLB TV. And so they're out there. If a game is more than 11 years old or whatever, it might as well be 80 years old. It's just inaccessible to most of us. There's this artificial scarcity. So that makes it more attractive to me. But I how the pace of baseball was in that time. I'd rather watch a game from the 60s or the 70s than probably this decade.

Okay. I was asked to predict a few things, so I'm going to do that. Let's see. Somebody asked me to predict a bunch of prospect things. How many career home runs, major league home runs for Josh Young? How many career strikeouts for Jackson Rutledge? Will Will Wilson hit 15 homers in a year? Will Justice Sheffield ever get some bold ink? will just all of those no zero whatever if i can

guess zero i will guess zero and so i'm taking zero across the board on those that is in four prospects i i think that is always the safest bet rather than picking some number, even in the best of times. And at this point, I might pick zero for everybody. Sorry. But let's see. Matthew asks, hustle doubles, who will have the most in the next decade? That's a tricky thing because hustle doubles are sort of, well, it's a personality trait and it's also a speed thing. And 10 years of predicting speed for the next 10 years is tricky. It's tough. I would say that when we did the play index on this, I think that Kevin trait and it's also a speed thing and 10 years of predicting speed for the next 10 years is tricky it's tough i i would say that when we did the play index on this i think that kevin kiermeier was the hustle double king i consider javi baez to be the current hustle double king but i can't really pick

either of those i don't think both too old and someone like fernando tastis jr is a great pick because he is just uh such an aggressive runner and also so fast. So I might pick him. But, you know, in three years, he might be hitting 46 homers and bulked up. And so I don't really know. But I'll go with Fernando Tatis Jr. And Matthew asks, what year will Cleveland and Atlanta change their names to less offensive mascots? This is a tough one.

I don't think Atlanta will ever change their name. I think that they will remove all of the imagery and then reframe it as simply an adjective and try to try to do that. But if I had to guess, I would guess that this year will be the last year that there is a chop. I would guess that there will be discouraging language coming from the club about the chop and that will not stop it this year but it will make it essentially a non-group activity by 2021 just to guess cleveland i'm gonna that's a tough one i if you'd asked me 10 years ago i might have said by now but i will say within 10 years okay the chop seems easier to do if the team decides they want to do it all they have to do is stop playing the music that's true fans might do it on their own for a while just to show that they could or something but i think that would die down pretty that's a great point yeah great point all right so are there any words we can say about noah cinder guard for the second time in a week now baseball has lost a very prominent and exciting

pitcher without baseball even being played which just seems kind of cruel because it's like, hey, there's no baseball. There's no baseball even on the horizon, really. But if baseball were to come back, this guy's not going to be part of it. It's just sort of gratuitous. It's like, you know, just tell us later. Like, you know, tell us that he had the surgery like after the fact when we're in a better headspace because baseball is back. Give me a day for opening day and then say, oh, by the way, a few weeks ago, Noah Sindergaard tore his UCL and had Tommy John surgery. But he's already recovering nicely.

Yeah, he's already on the comeback trail. And hey, baseball's back. So it's not so bad. I feel like, you know, just like wait to break the news until a better time. Yeah, I, you know, I, the talk today, a lot of the talk today was about when they'll come back and how the season might get extended to try to get it longer. And, you know, there was like, obviously there's a sense of overwhelming anxiety over all of life right now. And so this

might've just been a residual anxiety, but I felt just so nervous reading everybody's plan. I mean, there, there weren't a lot of them, but everybody's plan for how to, how to get more games in, how to even ramp up again when spring training comes, uh, you know, like I'm just, I'm nervous about what players are doing on their own for the next couple months. Like you can't even, you know, be in groups of a dozen to have like, you know, oversight over what you're doing right now. And then they're going to ramp up again.

They already got almost to full speed and they had to stop. And now they're going to have to go back to full speed in probably less time. And then they're going to have this year that is of a length that nobody is calibrated for. And then there might be more double headers. I saw somewhere maybe two double headers a week. And then the season might go longer. It will play in worse weather. It will play when it's colder.

Scott Boris wants to play on Christmas. I mean, there's like, I'm just, again, like this is not the primary source of my anxiety right now, but I just wonder, and then you have a much shorter off season, of course, next, next off season before the season comes back. At which point, by the way, who knows, we might have, you know, round two of coronavirus going on. And so I'm just really, I just don't know. I mean, it's worrisome and somewhat terrifying to think about whether all of these bodies that have been trained and conditioned to reach this almost superhuman level, but under intense scrutiny and precise calibration,

and they still, a third of them get hurt every year i'm still like i'm really wondering whether we can do this on the fly yeah it is pretty concerning and with cinder guard at least like he's a guy who i think people have been waiting for this news for years like when we were talking about it at the ringer when it it happened and Michael Bauman blogged about it, he was joking about trying to find and exhume an old draft of a blog post that he had once written when it seemed like this might have happened to Sindergaard because he's had scares before. And really, since he came up, he's thrown so hard. He's been one of the hardest throwing, if not the very hardest throwing pitchers in baseball. And there was a period earlier in his career, at least, where it really seemed like he was motivated by that. He wanted to throw as hard as he possibly could. I can remember stories about

how they wanted him maybe to ease off a little bit and focus on command. And he just wanted to throw as hard as he possibly could. And in the spring of 2017, he showed up to spring training with 17 more pounds of muscle. And he said he wanted to throw harder. And this was coming off a season when his fastball averaged 99.5. He was easily the hardest throwing starter already in baseball. And I get trying to be better, but like, have you heard of Icarus? How hard is too hard? Where whatever you gain in effectiveness, you lose in health. I don't know whether that has changed at all as he has aged, but he continues to throw very hard. And that does seem to be something that's kind of correlated

with this injury, although it's obviously not in every case. There are hard throwers who don't get hurt, and there are soft tossers who do get hurt. And Mets fans have seen this happen to everyone, Harvey and DeGrom and Wheeler and Matz. But with Sindergaard, it's kind of like we've been waiting for a while for this to happen. And he's actually coming off his most durable season, which is something that I didn't really realize at the time because it wasn't his most spectacular season. He didn't pitch up to the level on a per inning basis that he had in previous years, but he's never thrown 200 innings in 2017. He missed most of the year. And I do hope that he is able to come back and pitch at a high level again whenever baseball is back because he has been a very exciting pitcher at his peak. And if he does not get back to that level, it'd be very disappointing because looking back at 2016

and how good his stats were and how young he was, obviously there have been even more tragic stories with players and pitchers than Noah Sindergaard's, but it's just another one where I kind of was looking forward to seeing him have another great full year. And obviously it's a pretty devastating one for the Mets given the division they're in and the step down from Sindergaard to whoever his replacement would be. So it's a big bummer amid many other bummers. Best of luck to him in his recovery and in actually having surgery at a time when most people are not able to have elective surgeries. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there's still some debate, right, about whether it's going to be possible. Like, it seems like that's the plan,

but I'm reading an article that was posted two hours ago where it's like describes it as somewhat up in the air maybe. And that I don't know that it hasn't happened yet is what I'm saying. Because of medical resources, in case people are not familiar with this debate, most elective surgery has been prohibited in New York because medical resources are needed for obviously more important things. Yeah, I think he's having it in Florida, or he's supposed to be having it in Florida. But I think you just have to get a doctor to designate it as essential, basically, which, you know, it is essential to his profession, obviously, but is perhaps not essential compared to someone whose life is in danger. So between the fact that it's a very wealthy, famous athlete and team, as we've seen with testing, for instance, there seem to be different standards at times, unsurprisingly.

And it's an outpatient procedure, and it's also something that tends to be performed by a certain few specialists who maybe are not performing life-saving surgeries if they're not doing Tommy John, but I assume it will happen somewhere at some point. All right, let's answer some emails here. So this is a question from Robert, and it's kind of a two-parter. He says, how do you think history will look back on the 2020 world champion, assuming there is one? The 1998 to 99 San Antonio Spurs won the NBA title during a lockout-shortened season, a fact that seems to frequently be used to deride the legitimacy of their status as champion. However, the 1981 Dodgers seem to be immune to such criticisms. Will we take it easy on the 2020 World Series champs because of the serious nature of the circumstances? I suspect it will depend, which brings me to question two. What are the most

important factors that may determine how much history looks down on the 2020 World Series winner? Is it number of games played, the potential weirdness of an altered playoff format, or how surprising the winner ends up being? For example, a Yankees or Dodgers title would probably be seen as legit, but a D-backs or Rangers one may not. Are there any other factors you think would influence public perception of 2020's eventual, hopefully, champion? I'm trying to figure out why anybody would be upset about the Spurs title. I don't know. I know nothing. I don't either. I will just say that they had the best record in the NBA. So even if it were an 82 game season, they probably would have made the playoffs pretty safely. And then they beat everybody in the playoffs, which the playoffs

weren't affected. The postseason was still the postseason. It wasn't shortened, or maybe it was. I think that the emailer pointed to this, but I don't think that the champion will be, I mean, the playoffs, like just in exactly the same way, probably the playoffs will still be the playoffs. Now there are timelines where the playoffs are also affected, but presumably the length of the playoffs, you know, would be the same. And so once you get there, I don't think anybody can say that a, uh, your victory over, you know, three opponents in, in, in succession would be any different than the similarly flukish victory over three opponents that every postseason champ goes through.

So as long as people believe that you merited your spot in the postseason, then I think it would be fine. And so, yeah, I mean, I would guess that there are like 23 teams that could play well enough to make the playoffs, run through the playoffs, and then seem credible, regardless of how long the season is, even if the season is 100 games. So as long as it's not the Orioles, Tigers, Pirates, Mariners, Royals, or Giants, I think they're probably safe. Yeah, I think so too. I don't know. Maybe the Spurs, that was their first championship.

And so I don't know if that's why people at the time thought this was what they needed, but they ended up winning five, right? So I think in retrospect, if it's a team that wins in the shortened season, but then goes on to be dominant for years and years and win more championships, then it's not like you can criticize them on the basis that they only won that one with weird circumstances. So as Robert was saying, if it is a very talented team, a team that has won before or a team that wins after that, then I don't know that anyone would hold it against them. If it's like the shortest season ever, and again, like 81 was pretty short, and still you don't really hear people holding that against the Dodgers as far as I can tell, even though, as we discussed, there were teams that were the best teams in their division that year and didn't make the playoffs because of the weird split season. So you'd think that if anything, that would lead to a lot of people applying their own asterisks to the outcome.

And you don't really hear that. So I don't know if it's just a function of time, like decades pass and all the years blend together and you hear, oh, they won the World Series that year. And you don't even think that that was a weird outlier year. If it does end up being like, I don't know, a two month season or something, like if it's just the shortest season ever, then maybe it could get to a point where you would kind of question the legitimacy of it, I suppose. Yeah, but even with that, I mean, I think we should just say that questioning the legitimacy of it, like the real world consequences of that is every once in a while a podcast host says something about it like that there's no no one would care the real answer to this is that nobody would care at all like they would all be just as happy when they won and all the other teams would have wanted it just as much and there will still be a million people well will there be a million people at the parade? No, there probably won't be a million people at the parade, but it will still be enjoyed and treated as exactly the same except by content creators in parentheticals, and they won't even care that much.

Okay. Well, related question then from Jesse, a Patreon supporter. How about this for an idea? If the season has to be abbreviated, play one to two months of baseball and then use the results to seed a tournament. Every team in MLB is in. Play best of five or seven games.

Eliminated teams can play in a consolation bracket and we can have a result that ranks all of the teams one through 30. It would be exciting. Keep all the teams involved and a way to take advantage of the shortened season. This would especially work if there have to be games in front of no fans. There wouldn't be much loss of revenue, and the unique format would likely drive ratings.

Good or bad idea. And this is something a lot of people have been asking us about and talking about and writing articles about. And I feel like you should stake your claim to this idea and this topic because you wrote about this and we talked about it here years ago. So your time has come for the everyone makes the playoffs idea. Yeah, I do. I mean, I do like everybody making the playoffs. I don't necessarily see the circumstances of this season as justifying it any more than

I already like the idea. I think that unless you can only I mean, honestly, truly, genuinely, if they can play 60 games, to me, that's fine. Like I don't need a regular season that's any more legitimate than that. It's fine. Like it can just be weird for a year. You know, they have like, like, not all sports are as rigorous about making sure that you've passed some, like, you know, you've answered three riddles from a troll before you can get into the playoffs.

Like a lot of sports are just like, come on in, let's play. And I think that like this season, if they play, it's going to be great. And I don't think we necessarily need to come up with anything super radical to make it great. The fact that they're to make it great. The fact that they're playing will be great. But yeah, I like every team making the playoffs. Yeah.

I mean, usually I don't really, but I could- I've already talked about that though. I did a whole episode about that. I know. Right. I can tell people. I can link to that if people want to go check it out. But there are two ways you could think about it. The one is that, as you just said, like, well, we'll all just know it's a weird season and yet we'll stick with as

close to normality as we can. And we'll sort of play it as if it's normal and it'll just be short and we'll understand that, but it'll look more or less the same, just compressed. Or you could say, well, this is going to be weird either way. So let's just go full weird and let's just say well this season is not the typical season it actually will be an outlier or an asterisk or something we'll just embrace it and we won't try to stick to what we normally do and yeah let's just throw out the typical format and we'll just do brackets or round robin or whatever, a series of short series. And that'll be the season when we'll all just acknowledge that this was a weird singular year and it'll be fun and special and strange. And I don't know which would be better because on the one hand, that is more disruptive. That makes it seem less legitimate maybe because there's no precedent and it won't happen again, hopefully. And so I don't know which would be better for baseball. I think that would maybe be an appealing thing. But on the other hand, if you said this is just a one-time thing,

it's not like we've ever done it, it's not like we ever want to do it again, then maybe that does just from the start sort of send the signal that this doesn't really count. This won't count, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like we'll still say that someone won, but this is a do-over basically. So I don't know which would actually be better. On the one hand, I'd be curious to see a new format that I've never seen before. But on the other hand, it might make me care less because I just feel like this will be a weird speed bump and we'll all just talk about it in the future as remember that one weird year where they just played a tournament and we won't consider it the way that we do most seasons.

Yeah, I think in that case, then it really would delegitimize the champion. I think that I would enjoy it. I think I think I would enjoy it with just as much enjoyment as I enjoy anything. So it would be fun to watch. But yeah, I think 30 years from now, the champion of that would be considered illegitimate, not a real champion. And I do not know if the team would feel the same way as they would if they went through the normal. And I would just like to clarify that my plan to get every team in the postseason is partly designed to give a bigger advantage to the best team in the regular season than currently exists. And this idea that is sketched out would basically put all teams on even footing. And so there you really truly would

have a situation where like the the those seven teams that I named the set, you know, the seven that you can't even fathom as contenders would probably have collectively like a one in 10 chance of winning the world series or close to it. So that would be, that would be a bit much. Yeah. And also part of your reason for that plan was that the season's really long and there are a lot of meaningless games with no stakes, right? And this would be a way to artificially add stakes. And that wouldn't be as big a problem in this shortened season because there'd be fewer teams. They wouldn't have time to get out to giant leads and teams that were totally out of it. Plus, there'd be fewer games.

We'd all be very eager to have baseball, and we'd be aware that there was less baseball. And so every game would seem more meaningful, it would actually be more meaningful, but also it would just seem like it. So maybe this is the time when you need that least of all. Okay, so but let's let's do one more though hypothetical part of this. So we don't know we don't really have any idea when the season starts. We don't know if it's early June. We don't know if it's early August. We don't know if it's early October. We just don't know anything right now. And so I said 60 games and I'm fine. You get me 60 games and I'll call it a season and that would be fine with me. But the contours of this are still being defined. If they couldn't do 60, if like, if it turned out that you couldn't play a baseball game

until September 15th, then A, would you want this as opposed to nothing? Would you rather them play a abnormal one-time, one-time only round robin tournament of all 30 teams that takes place over the course of you know eight weeks in late fall and early winter or would you rather wash the whole season out and b is it remotely conceivable that the players could essentially start at the playoffs like physically could they prepare in that way or do you need to have a few weeks that are slow and regular and not the postseason? I think as long as you had a few weeks, just like the second spring training, I think you could start with the playoffs. I don't think you need regular season weeks to get players up to post

season speed. But yes, I mean, I keep thinking like, well, some baseball has to be better than no baseball, right? What are the advantages of no baseball? There may be some teams that at a certain point decide that they don't want to play, that it's not in their financial interest to play. Now, on the one hand, a lot of the conversation has been about the negotiations between the union and the owners about what will happen with service time. And it does seem like based on the latest that Ken Rosenthal has said that players will get service time, that players who played in 2019 would get the same service time in 2020. They would have to agree to prorated salaries so they'd make less money, but they would get the service time and they would become

free agents if they were slated to become free agents, unless it was 2020 players, players just making their major league debuts who had not played in 2019, then they wouldn't get service time, it seems like based on the latest reports. But I don't know if there's a time when I personally would say I'd rather have no baseball. But if baseball comes back in like September or August or something, you have a pretty small window before football begins. And if the NFL is playing a full regular season and baseball is playing this strange little compressed sideshow, I don't know that it would actually capture people's attention and maybe it really would just seem like this weird quirk and let's just start fresh next year. I don't know. I asked Meg this question last week and she said, no, like give me baseball. I mean, partly that's because Meg runs a baseball site and any baseball content is obviously helpful, which I understand maybe if

baseball just goes away entirely for a year like is there value in just reminding people hey this is something you like like is there a real cost to a gap year like if you get through a year entirely without baseball will people say maybe i didn't actually need this baseball thing. I survived. I found other interests. Is there a point at which people just decide to move on? There's some point, obviously, if you took a decade off or something, then new fans wouldn't be created and old fans just wouldn't care anymore. It wouldn't be part of their routine. I don't know whether one year gets you to that, and I hope not, and I hope we don't find out but that would be something that's in the back of my mind just like hey let's let's remind people that this is something they like just like even as a teaser

for 2021 like hey this is the thing that uh you've been missing and that we will give you next year yeah i would be strongly in favor of even six weeks yeah just so that you don't have just blank lines across the board in you know in the history books in our memories i think that salvaging something from every year is good and i don't know i think that we would given all that we are are, you know, that we're, that we're, I mean, this, we're all going to learn to be satisfied with less from 2020. And I think that, you know, it seems like a shell of a full season, what we're describing. But I think that we're, by that point, going to be really adept at feeling grateful for shells. Yes. Okay. Do you have a step blast? I do.

All right. How would you feel about a live rendition of the step blast? I warned Jessie that I might call her in to do a live step blast, and she's been home with me for a few weeks now, which is unusual. I might as well take advantage. Oh, thank goodness. I thought I was going to have to do the live rendition. No. All right.

Let's see. Jesse, you out there? Have you fallen asleep? All right. I better go. Oh, she's here. I almost fell asleep. Do you care to sing us a step last? I'll do my best. Okay. The floor is yours. Jesse Barber, everyone.

Hang on. I want to change my headphones i don't do it i want to turn on my good headphones sam wants to wait he's changing his headphones so he can i'm getting my good ones out with better quality yeah exactly oh hang on hang on okay oh i can't find the cord here it is okay i'm i'm hyped bring it all right they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or ops plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it at length and analyze it for us

in amazing ways here's today's stat blast oh woo oh I am almost weeping sam says he's almost weeping bye sam i miss you that was so nice

jesse thank you okay thank you jesse okay all right oh i'm gasping can you still deliver your step less i. That was so nice. All right. These headphones are too good. I got to change out my headphones. Hang on. All right. There's this kind of genre of fun fact that I'm always a little ambivalent about, which

is like the best player to never make an all-star team or the best player to never do a good thing. So what i'm doing is is it kind of like that it's it's sort of in that i'm always a little ambivalent about about those who because they feel a little bit that they're they're honoring the player but also pointing out in you know a deficiency in that player's life and career this one was actually recommended to me by matthew who hang on, is this the same Matthew? I think this might be the same Matthew who asked me about Cleveland and Atlanta, but I'm not sure about that.

Matthew asks, Bill Buckner debuted at 19 and played until he was 40. He ended up with a whopping 15.1 war. Not a bad career. But it seems shockingly low for someone who debuted as a teen and played until their 40s. Does he have the lowest career war of any player to start in their teens and play until their 40s? And you, I replied and I CC'd you, so you are maybe already know this, but if you didn't

read it, do you have any guess of how many players there are that played in four decades? I remember reading your response and it was not many. No, it was not. It was a lot fewer than I realized. I count, if I did the querying right, I count 14 players total, pitchers and hitters, only 14. And he's correct. Buckner at 15 war is the lowest. And really, it's not even all that close. Rick Dempsey is next at

25, which is, you know, two thirds more than Buckner had. And then Elmer Vallow and Mike Morgan are 28 and 29. And then you jump up to Rusty Staub, who is triple Buckner. He's at 46, and he's the fifth from the bottom. So we're already triple Buckner. The median is somewhere between Red Ruffing, who had 55 war and Gary Sheffield, who had 61. So I mean, you think about Gary Sheffield being the median in a data set. Yeah, that's a pretty high bar. And then you have Brooks Robinson, Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey Jr., Burt Bleileven, Joe Morgan, and Alex Rodriguez. And that's the 14. So it is true that Bill Buckner is the worst. So we know, we've talked about, I've written about, other people have written about how simply being in the majors at a young age is a tremendous predictor of

stardom. And so in fact, if you look at players since 1910 who have at least 500 plate appearances total, not in one year, but total through their age 20 season. There are 53 of those players and 26 of them are in the Hall of Fame. If you include Adrian Beltran, Alex Rodriguez, one of whom is certainly going to make it and the other who I assume is going to, and certainly obviously deserves to on a performance level. And so basically half are, and then 27 of them are not. So it's 50-50 more or less. All you have to do is play in the majors, 500 plate appearances through age 20, and you're a coin flip to make the hall of fame. What I did not realize and that I don't think I have talked about or written about is that it's about the same for old players

that if you look at players who have 500 plate appearances in their entire careers from age 40 on, there are 44 of those players, which is less common than I realized. And of those 44, 24 of them are in the Hall of Fame and 20 of them are not. And that 20 includes Barry Bonds and Peteete rose so if not for those circumstances then it'd be 26 to 18 so it is just as predictive that you i guess were an all-time great if you play a you know fairly significant amount of time

after 40 not even that significant 500 plate appearances appearances, one full year. And in fact, if you look at the players who are on both lists, there are only three players who are on both lists. 500 plate appearances through age 20, 500 plate appearances after age 40. Those three are Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Ted Williams. So having both, having the longevity to arrive early and also stay late is predictive of something truly extraordinary. And so by that standard, and I should just note, if people are confused, the first thing I did was 19, you know, teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s. The second thing I did was through age 20. So I said Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Ted Williams, but none of them were on the list of the 14 because they debuted at age 20. All right. So if you think about it

that way, Bill Buckner really is the exception to this. And, you know, to some degree, it is that he had the least extraordinary career of most of these players. But to some degree, it's also that he was barely in this group at all. So he played one game as a 19-year-old. One game, one plate appearance, in fact. He was called up to the Dodgers as a 19-year-old. And it got a mention in the Los Angeles Times when he was called up, but only like the Dodgers also called up six minor leaguers and then they listed the six. And that was the only time he was mentioned in

the LA times that whole season. So, uh, he was not like part of the team in the way that a player is normally part of the team. He batted one time in the ninth inning of a tie game with two on and one out. He pinch hit for the pitcher. He popped out to second base. And that was his whole career as a teenager. So he barely made it into this. And then really, even as a 40 year old, he barely played as a 40 year old. Let's see. He had in his age 40 season, he had 48 plate appearances. He had a 490 OPS. He was just barely hanging on at that point in his career. And in fact, if you really look at it, Bill Buckner's career makes a lot more sense if you kind of lop it off at a certain point. So he was a very good player in his early 20s and then

through his peak, through his late 20s and then into his early 30s. And then, I don't know, then he has his decline. So age 34, he has a 91 OPS plus. Age 35, he has a 106 OPS plus. But let's see, I'm just looking here. 34, negative war. If you maybe would have considered that, you know, usually when you have a 34-year-old with a negative war and he was negative 0.8, there's usually not a lot left over in his career. Maybe you consider his next year could have been his

last year. And then after that, he has negative war, and then the next year, negative war, and then the next year, negative war, and then the next year, negative war, and then the next year, negative war, and then he's out out so if you were to end his career before the run the final run of six negative wars five negative wars then it would have ended his career after the 1985 season bill butler never would have been in the 1986 world series he would be remembered as a batting champ as the recipient of mvp votes four years out of five as a batting champ, as the recipient of MVP votes four years out of five as a Chicago Cub, as one of the great bat control hitters of his time, as one of the great contact hitters, one of the last truly great contact hitters in Major League Baseball.

And he would not be remembered for anything after 1985. And he also would have not been on this data set because he would have been out of the game. So anyway, Bill Buckner did have a very good career. He also did have a very poor career relative to other players who played as teenagers and also as 40 somethings, but he probably shouldn't have played as a teenager or as a 40 something. And that's the final word on Bill Buckner's career. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that old players' playing time would be predictive of how good those guys were or had been. In a way, I would think it'd be more predictive because with the young guys, yes, it tells you about their talent, but there's another 20 years to go before

they actually have to call it a career and make the Hall of Fame. Yet with an old guy, it still tells you something about the talent that he's still playing at that age. But there's not the same uncertainty about his future because obviously if he made it to his 40s and he's still good enough to play, then he's had a whole full career, reasonably healthy. He didn't have a career-ending injury at some point, which a 19-year-old obviously could at any point in the next 20 years. And so I guess, on the other hand, maybe you get some guys who hang around just because they're good clubhouse leaders or veteran mentors or something, which you don't get a 19- old getting promoted for that reason. But yeah, I would think that, you know, you still, if you're good enough to play at 40 something, then presumably you were better

when you were 30 something and 20 something, which means that you must have been really great at those ages. So that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. I don't know if this is true, but anecdotally, just having looked at the lists what was interesting to me is that the players who didn't make the hall of fame who were on the teenage list who were you know played before they were 20 for the most part their careers you know they hit a wall somewhere they got hurt they they got bad or whatever and they don't other than buddy bell was the one player who probably should be in the hall of fame or has a good case for the hall of fame if you look at the players in their 40s who were good in their 40s who didn't make the hall of fame there's actually a bunch of the the players who

had really strong cases on that list so uh like kenny lofton is on that list and greg nettles is on that list and rusty stob is on that list and his Hall of Fame case is not as good now as I recall it being written about maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Maybe as war has developed, his case has maybe suffered for some reason, but I do know that Rusty Staub had a very dignified career, a very good career, and I've read pieces where he is included in Hall of Fame candidates. Daryl Evans, I think, is a player who has a Hall of Fame-ish war. He's on the old list. So what I'm saying is that the players who are really good when they're old, I think maybe tend to get remembered as hangers-on, as what is that word? Compilers. Yeah, true. All right. Well, on the subject of

old players, here's a question from Brian who says, I was thinking about Ken Griffey Jr. and how he never won a World Series. What if players of a certain status, a certain queer war or all-star appearances got to choose the team they wanted to be on for their last season? What if that extra roster spot that's coming this season is for just that? What if each row had jumped onto the Dodgers or Astros last season just for one chance at a ring? Maybe this would feel insincere, but they'd still be playing there the full season and working toward that goal. But they chose the team they thought would have the best chance to win would also be interesting to see how players made this choice. Well, what percentage of players know that it's their final season though when they're embarking on their final season? It's got to be a tiny, tiny, tiny number. And particularly if you limit it to players who could declare themselves available to World Series contenders and actually get a spot.

Yeah, that's the other thing is that, you know, Ken Griffey Jr. in his last year, the World Series team probably would have said, no thanks. But, you know, he'd probably actually hurt the World Series odds of the team that he was on. Like, in Griffey's case, he had gone back to the Mariners and there was a sentimental attachment there and so if there were a player who had this career war threshold or whatever qualifications for the status we were to apply if it's a player who's been with one team for a very long time and is closely associated with that team then i would guess that he would just choose to stay there and say well these are the cards i've been dealt or I dealt myself.

And I'm with this team and I don't want to jump ship for one year to try to win a ring with a bunch of people I've never played with in a city that's never seen me play. But there are quite a few players who, especially in their latter years, become journeymen and were great at one time, but go from team to team. become journeymen and were great at one time, but go from team to team. And in that case, then maybe there'd be no cost to going to this team. And they might say, I want to win that ring. But I mean, if you're a free agent at that point, a lot of players will be free agents at that point. And they can choose. Yeah.

So many of them already have this option if the team makes this option available to them. have this option if the team makes this option available to them. But I don't know. I'm thinking of like Carlos Beltran going to the Astros now, which obviously is different in retrospect. But that was kind of a case where it was like, here's this old guy and maybe he can win a championship. And that can be a nice storyline, but would it feel artificial if you were just freed from your contract and it's just, all right, here's the farewell tour, except that you can choose to do the farewell tour wherever you want. It seems like the premise of this question is that the value of the player not counting as a roster spot is really important here.

of the player not counting as a roster spot is, is really important here. So like he, I think he is acknowledging that Ken Griffey Jr. does not belong on a world series team exactly. And that a true world series caliber team would not use a roster spot on him, but you get a bonus one to carry your living legend. And that seems fun to me. Like,

I think that it would be fun and i think we would get into the narrative part of that however again i go back to there being very very few players that like there are not 30 players there are not even two players most years i think who who fit this description where they are good enough to be a living legend and they know with certainty that they're going to retire yeah and they're not free agents and they're not free agents but yeah oh and also oh yeah the last thing is and they've never won a world series most players have won a world series if they're 20 year living legend veterans uh there are very few and so uh i do i think i like the idea here of fudging some of the rules so that your Ken Griffey Jr. types can have a real chance of winning a World Series and we can cheer along even if they're not much more than the spiritual uplift part of the team. But I don't know that this is the most efficient way to do it.

So I don't know how the best way to do it so i don't know how the best way to do it is but i would i would have been perfectly happy to see ken griffey jr would i have been would i have been perfectly happy also the thing is too you have to decide whether you want to see that player in a strange uniform in some cases in some cases sure i've seen that player in a bunch of uniforms in a lot of cases though Especially in the players who we would have Like would you have wanted to see Adrian Beltre Maybe we don't care we've already seen him in four uniforms

But would you have wanted to see Adrian Beltre Suddenly in a fifth I don't know maybe maybe not I'm not sure Because there'd be some bitterness With a lot of these guys if they did Choose and that's why part of the question Was it would be interesting to see what the players would decide to do because most players who have attained living legend status

haven't played for that many teams, probably. There are some, obviously, who bounce around, but if you're really good, then you're probably more likely to have been signed to a long-term contract at some point and built up a real rapport with that city and are associated with that city. And, you know, you probably haven't played for more than a couple teams. And so, yeah, like even when Beltran went to the Astros to try to win a World Series, like even he had a history with the Astros, a brief one. But he was on that 2004 team and he had that unbelievable playoff run with them. And so there was still something there. So with a lot of guys like, you know, what I want, like, I'm trying to think of someone in recent years. Legitimate World Series contenders to begin With right so like You know Derek Jeter in his final

Season like he was on the Yankees I guess at that point the Yankees weren't actually That good but Jeter also doesn't qualify for this because He's already got rings because he won a million yeah But yeah right So there aren't that many guys I think I hate this idea actually

I think it's fine that it's hard To win a World Series and some people If you make it hard some people aren't Going actually. I think it's fine that it's hard to win a World Series, and if you make it hard, some people aren't going to get it, and that's fine. That's the cost of making it satisfying. Yeah, I'm trying to think if it would be less special if you could pick the best team, because that's part of the reason why it is so special

when it happens, is that you can't pick, and you do just have to guess or, you know, take what you're dealt in terms of what team signed you or drafted you or traded for you or whatever. And some players don't get lucky and other players do. So I don't know if you could decide before the season, if you could just look at the projections and say, well, these are the front runners. I'm going to go join them. Won't people accuse you of jumping on the bandwagon or whatever? And if you are turning your back on a city that has a relationship with you, then I could see why they would feel snubbed because it's not going because you're unwanted or because you're underpaid or something it's just like well i want

to go win with a bunch of other people and get myself a ring and maybe it just wouldn't be as special if you don't have a history there so there are certain circumstances where this would work out like with itro i guess you know when he was with the marlins or whatever it's like you know he could go somewhere else and we'd all be happy about it. But, you know, he went back to the Mariners just like Griffey did because there is that urge to return to a place that cares about you and that you care about. So maybe that's more important. You know who jumped to a World Series contending team late in his career after a very long and accomplished career that didn't include a World Series ring?

Bill Buckner. Oh, yeah. Look how that worked out. All right. Last one. This is from Andrew. He says he is a Patreon supporter. He says, if teams are concerned about injuries due to overuse, but also want to get games

in, why not play seven inning games at the start of the season until players are ready? So he's saying that the baseball season could come back and instead of having, you know, a four week spring training, maybe they just have a two week spring training or something, but they play some seven inning games so that pitchers don't have to go as deep into games. It's also been brought up that if they do go to this two double headers a week idea, then maybe the double headers could be seven innings apiece, which is something that has happened in the minor leagues. So this is a way to get more games in, but it's also another thing that would be weird about this baseball season. Well, you know, by the way, Bill Buckner got traded to the Red Sox.

So never mind. He's a cheap shot anyway. There are people. So you have to decide, I think, whether you want to see seven inning games for all games before you decide what you feel about this. Because there are people who want to see seven inning games for all games. Not a lot, but there are some.

It's growing. And as games continue to get longer and as attention spans continue to get shorter and as the sort of kind of basic logic of seven inning games instead of nine inning games becomes more popular among people, I would guess that in 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, it is going to be a hot topic of debate. Should we switch to seven? And if you switch some games in this current coming season to seven, what you are doing is accelerating that timeline by, by possibly decades. If, if there are seven inning games this summer, then I guarantee you in 10 years, we are going to have seven inning games

in Major League Baseball, which might be great. And I'm not knocking it. But you have to decide whether you want what's on the end of that slippery slope, because I think there's no doubt that it is a slippery slope from introducing it in Major League Baseball to ultimately having it in a standard form in the season. Maybe not for all games, but standard form in the season. Right. That's something people are talking about in a lot of areas of life during this pandemic is, you know, like everyone starts working from home and suddenly you realize that, oh, okay, the business can function potentially, or I can function working from home. And then do you start to see more lenient policies around coming into the office in the future,

even when it's safe to do so? So there are all kinds of societal changes that could happen just because we've demonstrated that it's possible now. And the same thing could happen in baseball. And personally, I don't know, I'm kind of against the seven inning game as like, well, we're throwing in the towel on shortening games. That's why we're doing this we want games to be a certain length and we've decided that we can't get nine inning games down to that length anymore even though they used to be that length and so we're just going to lop off a couple innings and then maybe the seven inning games will start getting longer again and then we'll have this conversation again about six inning games in 30 years or something.

So I don't like it as that, as just like a retreat, as giving up. Because I feel like they could make the game shorter if they really were serious about it. And I know that guys throw harder now and maybe they need more recovery time between pitches and all that. and all of that. But I think if you really did strictly police that, you could get games down to a shorter length because they used to play games in a lot less time. So I do think it's possible. And I don't like it as that, as just, all right, we give up. This is the last resort. We need shorter games. So we're just going to give you less baseball, less action. I don't like it for that reason. But if you do decide that there's just too much baseball, period, which is a valid reason. And this is a similar conversation because people talk about, do we need 162 games? And so now maybe this season you have fewer games

for coronavirus related reasons. Maybe that makes people more willing to accept a shorter season in the future. I don't know. So on the one hand, I like getting more games in, but really, if you're not getting much more baseball in, it's the same number of innings and it's the same degree of determining who was actually the best team and the best players, then I think there'd be resistance to it based on the outs and the number of batters in the lineup and all of that symmetry that maybe we wouldn't really miss if it were gone but i think people are quite attached to it now so i don't know that it's worth it just to play some more games in this one weird season you know what they should do is they should instead of playing seven inning double headers they should play three inning triple headers. And then you

really keep the symmetry going. Every game is three games of three innings each. Yeah. Well, we just got an email from someone else who asked, Max said, if you could have double headers with two seven inning games, let's say that instead of playing two seven inning games, the team can agree to play one 14 inning game with the winner receiving two wins and the loser receiving two losses so same game just twice as long and it counts double in both directions okay i was just kidding about my thing though max was not no serious yeah i don't know is there an advantage to that it doesn't save any time. It saves some time between games, I guess.

Yeah, I don't know. And you can only have one crowd, although this year we might not have crowds, period. So that doesn't really matter if it's not a double entry, double header. There's no one there. All right. Weird year. Okay. Okay.

All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Jessie and her mandolin for the musical accompaniment. I should mention that Paul Moorhead, a listener in our Facebook group, has started a StatBlast cover competition. He's offering some small cash prizes to the winners, but I think it's really about the bragging rights or really just about the fun of it. And a few people have already submitted really great StatBlast song covers. I will probably play them at some point on the show. So I will link to that thread in the Facebook group if you want to get in on this. Some people have more time on their hands these days.

They're home. So if you want to record your own cover of the StatBlast song, I like hearing them and Jesse loves hearing them. So thanks to Paul for organizing that. You know, I meant to mention when we were bantering the most recent Mike Trout golf highlight. Of course, everyone saw the drive he made during spring training when he just absolutely crushed a ball and it kind of went viral and everyone was impressed that Mike Trout had hit a ball that far. And just recently there was another clip where he was working on his short game and he chipped a golf ball into a solo cup from his balcony in the second floor of his house,

I assume. And both of these shots have been really impressive, but I think in part they've impressed me because I wasn't really aware of Mike Trout's golf prowess. Clearly, he is a great golfer. It's not just that he happened to pick up a club for the first time and crushed a ball or chipped a ball. He plays golf all the time, and it's the sport that he takes second most seriously. I don't know why it is that I hadn't really paid close attention to this, because of course we overanalyze everything Mike Trout does or hypothetically could do, and everyone knows that he really likes the weather, and we've talked about how he hunts and fishes, but I hadn't really followed his golf game. I found an article from 2013 that talks about his golfing and at the time he said that he was probably like a seven or eight, maybe a nine handicap. If I don't play every day, then I'm a little shaky. I found a more recent article from 2017 that says he's more like a six or seven handicap. He also had a hole-in-one in March of 2017, so he's been doing it since high school.

He plays all the time. He's very good. He wants to play Augusta National someday, as I guess many golfers do. He's played around with Phil Mickelson at some point, so it's not like he just picked up a club for the first time and was a natural. But, you know, he's obviously super athletic, and he can dunk a basketball, and if baseball goes away, maybe he can just join the PGA tour. Also, while I was reading about his golf game, I found out that Mike Trout's childhood nickname was Headquarters because he had a big head, but he says no one calls him that anymore because they know better. Still has a big head though. You can

support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Eduardo Zybert, Jeff Silver, Frasier May, Arthur, and Adam Maas. I know times are tough financially for a lot of people,

so if you are still finding room in your budget for Effectively Wild, we are very grateful and appreciate it. You can join our aforementioned Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please help replenish our mailbag. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Sam and Meg via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

The new expanded paperback edition of my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, is still on track to come out on April 7th. As far as I know, you may or may not be able to walk into a bookstore and buy it. That seems unlikely, but you can order it online, maybe order it from a local bookseller and pick it up or have it delivered. It has a lengthy new afterword that you might be interested in, and maybe you have some time to read. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with one more episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. between us There is time between us

Ain't there something between us Something's short and sweet So what can I wait?