Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 158: Combining Bad Teams/Blocking the Plate/The 26-Man Roster

Episode Date: March 13, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about how many games a team formed from the three worst teams in baseball would win, whether catchers (and non-catchers) should be allowed to block the plate, and expanding active rosters.

Illogical. Illogical. Please explain. You are human. Only humans can explain their behavior. Please explain. I am not programmed to respond in that area. Good morning and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. It is episode 158. I'm Sam Miller. I'm with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? I am well. Great. It's Email Wednesday. Yeah. It came a day earlier than I had anticipated because we didn't do a podcast Monday. Yeah, and it actually also came an hour earlier than you anticipated because of Daylight Savings.

Oh, that's true. So a day and an hour, 25 hours early. Can we, before we start answering questions, can I say one brief thing about the winter meetings that, or not the winter meetings, the Sabre conference that I didn't say yesterday? I would love that. The most surreal moment of the Sabre conference was when I was asked by a member of the front office of the Reds

why we hate the Reds. Completely, seriously wondered why we hate the Reds. So I had to explain that whole backstory. And I maybe have to explain it again, because I feel like that we should explain it. Yeah, that comes from like episode 30 or something. And I assume that we have picked up new listeners, and none of them have been crazy enough to go back and listen to our archives. So that comes from, I don't know, after 30 episodes or so, someone had left a comment on one of our podcast posts chronicling every team that we had talked about to that point. team that we had talked about to that point. And I guess it makes sense that there would be a team that we hadn't talked about to that point if we were doing one or two topics per episode. But it just so happened that we hadn't really talked about the Reds so much, or his perception was that we hadn't talked about the Reds. So he actually did the he actually had a chart. Yes. He had he charted every topic, right. And so instead of explaining why that was,

we embraced our identities as Reds haters. And so periodically since then, we have pretended to hate the Reds. Or I don't know, maybe we genuinely have come to hate them now. No, I think that at some point in another episode from long ago that people would not have gone back and listened to, I think we both acknowledge that we quite like the Reds and that we like the way that the roster is currently constructed. We think they're a good team. And the primary reason we hadn't really done a lot of topics about them was simply that they were a team without any real flaws and they were a team without a real pennant race

because they were so much better than their division opponents that there wasn't a lot of day-to-day trauma around them. But we've talked about them since, I think. It just goes to show we have to be mindful of the fact that our words can hurt. It was discussed in the Reds' front office. Why do Ben and Sam hate the Reds? So now they know. Yeah.

I do find this whole thing shocking. Yes. I texted you and said that the Reds thought that we hated them, and you asked why because you couldn't believe that it was possibly because of the podcast thing that's right I sent you a response that said why and then I sent you a second response that said not because of the podcast all right so uh email Wednesday is beginning now um Eric Hartman uh from Brooklyn New York asks how many wins would you project in a season for an all-star team of the three worst teams in the majors?

And then he posits that the three worst teams in the majors are currently Houston, Minnesota, and Colorado. So he's saying that we're making one roster out of those three worst rosters. That's exactly what he's saying. Okay. three worst rosters. That's exactly what he's saying. Okay. So I went through the trouble, which took four seconds,

of actually doing this roster, of putting this roster together. So I'll just, real quick, I'll go down the list of what I think the roster would be. You can correct me if you think there are any mistakes here, but for catcher, you'd have Joe Maurer. For first base, it's tricky. I don't know that there's a world of difference between more no wallace helton carter and pena so you can sort of take any of them but i guess i maybe would think that you'd take uh i might take more harder

carter yeah could be could be any of them. Yeah. Maybe Peña? I guess I'd take Peña. I would not take Peña. All right. Fair enough. Second base, Altuve. Third base, Trevor Plouffe. Shortstop, Tulewitzki.

Corner outfield would probably be, I would say, Willingham and Carlos Gonzalez with Dexter Fowler in center. But if you prefer Michael Kadir on a corner and Cargo in center. And then a rotation of Norris, Shasin, Pomeranz, Worley, and Lucas Harrell, and then a pretty good bullpen of relievers, which every team has. Well, I like the lineup. It is a good lineup, and it actually sort of points out that one of the things that bad teams have is they generally don't have a sort of points out that one of the things that bad teams have is they generally don't have a sort of flatly bad team.

They're usually pretty bad at some positions. And then they happen to have a star here and a star there and an adequate player here and an adequate player there. If you did this with the Marlins, for instance, who I think might actually be worse than the Rockies maybe, you'd get Stanton in there, which would be fun. Although you wouldn't get Tulewitzki and you wouldn't get Carlos Gonzalez.

So you do actually end up with a pretty good lineup. And the deeper you go, I mean, the bench would be great, right? Because virtually everybody on these teams is better than the average bench player, or every starting player on these teams. So you have quite a bench to pull from, and I think that shows up in the bullpen, which your top five would probably be Betancourt, Belial, Perkins, Lopez, and maybe Burton, which is a pretty good bullpen.

Yeah, that sounds like a... But then the rotation is brutal. The rotation is almost not better than any of those teams' rotations. You could almost take any five of the 15 starters and it would be the same. I mean, that's probably, I don't know, what, a six-warp rotation right there from five guys? So maybe that's still a winning team, I think, maybe. I would definitely say it still a winning team, I think, maybe. I would definitely say it's a winning team. I don't know that it's a championship team.

Probably not a championship team. Stan Kasten said at the Sabre Conference, and I feel like I'm going to be referring to the Sabre Conference for weeks now, he said that if you have a good starting rotation, any outcome is possible for your team, regardless of how strong it is in other areas. And if you do not have a good starting rotation, then nothing is possible. Maybe that is an oversimplification, but that is his team-building philosophy. All things are oversimplifications because the English language cannot capture the nuance of

our internal minds. But I would say that the first half of that rings truer than the second half of it. I just, I bet you could find, I mean, well, I don't know if this might be disputable, but I mean, the 1975 Reds kind of had a lousy rotation, didn't they they won like 144 145 games yeah um okay so then you take these what 60 does 65 win teams and you smush them together and you get uh i don't know i think you could win close to 90 maybe yeah i think that it's probably the seventh or eighth best team in baseball. The question is, is there any practical use for this knowledge that we've used? Do you think Eric is going somewhere with this?

It was fun to talk about. I don't, I don't know. I don't know either. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what the larger lesson of baseball is from this discussion. I might think a little bit more about this. And if I have something later in the week to go further with it. Sounds like it could be a pebble hunting down the road. So now we're going to move on to another question. This is from a fellow named Logan who says – who asks, are there rules prohibiting another player from helping the catcher block the plate? For example, say there is one out in the bottom of the ninth and a man is on third, pop up to left, potential collision at the plate to decide the game. What prevents Prince Fielder from running over from first to help the catcher block the plate like an offensive lineman?

Vince Princefield or from running over from first to help the catcher rock to play like an offensive lineman. I'd say the pitcher could help as well, but they usually back up the catcher. The idea of physically impeding the path of the runner being illegal seems not to apply at home plate. So why not help out when the situation dictates it? I think this is a great question and it would be amazing if someone tried. I think that there are, if you don't mind, I will answer with two answers and if you want to just assent at the end or whatever. So one is that you note that you, Logan, you, Logan, are noting that it is illegal, that the rule, the baseball rule in question uh which i have here is the rule 706 subsection b comment the catcher without the ball in his possession has no right to block the pathway of the runner

attempting to score the baseline belongs to the runner and the catcher should be there only when he is fielding a ball or when he is already has the ball in his hand i mean this is a pretty clearly illegal play that the catchers already do, but it has been sort of grandfathered in or I guess not grandfathered in because it's always been against the rules, but deemed allowable. However, this is an unwritten rule. Clearly, once you start taking unwritten rules to frightening extremes, things get written and things get enforced. So I just don't think that you'd have any chance of getting this past an umpire.

And you'd actually, it would probably backfire because you would, as it is now, the catcher has an illegal edge over the base runner. If you tried to do anything tricky, you would essentially lose that edge because I think you would lose the umpires. The umpires would no longer be on your side. There's actually a... Well, okay, no, I don't need to get into that. The other thing is that right now when there's a collision, there's essentially the runner – the catcher has a little bit of a physical advantage in that he's well padded. But the umpire has an advantage in that he's running – I said the umpire. I meant the runner.

The runner – did I say the umpire? Yes. OK. The runner has an advantage because the runner is running, right? He's got all the force. So it's one body is at rest. The other body is in motion and the body in motion can do a lot more damage. Um, so when you talk about bringing a, uh, player in to assist in the blocking, even if it's a large girthy player like Prince Fielder,

uh, I think that he would just be physically destroyed by the impact because he wouldn't have the padding and he wouldn't have any momentum whatsoever. So essentially the base runner could just destroy him. And so I don't think that you would see any volunteers for that assignment. I think, yes, I agree it would be dangerous. I guess it's hard for me to imagine Prince Fielder being destroyed by anything. I guess it depends on the runner. I mean, Prince Fielder is a large man, but most ballplayers are large men, and a lot of ballplayers are very large men. Yeah. Well, maybe if it's David Eckstein or something. I don't know. It makes me think, I guess there are parallels

in other sports of players whose primary jobs are not to do a thing, doing that thing. Like in hockey, I guess, and I don't watch any of these sports, but I see highlights from time to time. There are those

times when hockey players who are not the goalie protect the goal and kind of sprawl and block the goal and just lie there or whatever. I don't know exactly what's legal, but that happens. Or I guess there are free kicks in soccer where everyone lines up and protects their private parts and stands there to help the goalie cut off an angle. Um, so it made me think of that, but yeah, I think your, your, your concerns are valid. Did you, uh, did you see the video recently of the college pitcher who, uh, tackled the base? Yes, I did. Um, well, so, uh, yeah, I mean, if you start assuming that because this one rule is overlooked that all rules will be overlooked, then basically the question is, well, why doesn't the third baseman just hold the guy?

Why doesn't the third baseman just wrap his arms around him and hold him? Because if the umpires aren't calling any of the rules, then they won't call that one. And, of course, they will. So that's the reason, I think. uh you have something to say uh not really i was just gonna say that i guess there have been teams that were known to do that a long time ago when there were fewer umpires i think like the orioles at the turn of last century were known for grabbing onto guys belt buckles as they went by to slow them down and that that's, I think, why there are as many umpires as there are now. While I was researching this, I looked at the Bill James historical baseball abstract

from the 80s or whatever this was published. And on the page where it discusses blocking the plate, there's a little story about Bill Beck and how in 1948 he would move the walls in and out depending on the opponent. Yes, I wrote about that. I figured you would like that. Let's see. I think we're going to do one more. This is from Matt Trueblood who wants to piggyback off of your discussion yesterday about the all bullpen starting pitching, whatever. And so Matt writes,

I found myself wondering why we don't just expand big league rosters to 26 men. Obviously, the great challenge to the liver shot model, a reference that only people who heard yesterday will understand, is that you have to carry 13 pitchers to do it maybe 14 roster flexibility doesn't exist anymore it seems and it shouldn't really surprise us that strikeouts are sky high and run scoring is low at a time when teams have ceded the platoon advantage yet it's clear that what teams are doing in terms of pitcher handling is working pitchers are staying healthier and pitching as well as ever the natural solution to me would be to expand rosters so that teams can keep pursuing this sound pitching strategy without feeling so

hamstrung the 26th guy would be a minimum wage player so it's not like the owners should get up in arms over it it's been 25 forever uh although it actually has only been 25 since like the late 80s, seems like, which is still a long time, just not forever, seems like a change is past due. Thanks. I agree that that is the greatest obstacle. And I think Brian Kenney, when he was talking about that, told a story about proposing that idea to Larry Boa and proposing that teams don't use starters

and just go bullpen only from the beginning. And Larry Boa said, that's great, Brian. How do you win the second game? Which is kind of the problem. I just... It doesn't... Can I just interrupt? The math seems to be sort of... I mean, depending on how you do it,

I guess the problem is that you're one disaster outing away from having your plans disrupted, but it doesn't seem that hard to get the innings out of a 12-man bullpen. Well, I guess if you, I mean, now it seems like guys never go more than one inning. I mean, now it seems like guys never go more than one inning. I guess if you could expand relievers' workload a little bit as you decrease starters' workload, that would help. If you could get guys to go two innings, which startlingly few relievers do anymore, that would help. I guess, I mean, I don't know that this change, I mean, this change would certainly help you put that plan into action,

but I don't know that it's in baseball's best interest to encourage that. Yeah, I agree. I don't know that it's good baseball. It's terrible baseball. It's ugly. It's awful. I mean, look, the starting pitcher is as close to a hero, a sort of a quarterback, as baseball has. It makes each day different than the previous day.

And there's something about having Justin Verlander start every fifth day that makes baseball more marketable. And I mean, when even, I don't know, even, I mean, obviously the sort of weirdness of it might not appeal to people. You might lose people that way. But I just think that losing the, you know, turning every pitcher into an anonymous two-inning guy, basically, which is sort of what this does, I mean, it might be great strategy. I'd be all in favor of it. If I were the Rockies, I'd do it instantly.

But, I mean, it would give Bud Selig a heart attack, I think. And so asking Bud to not only stand idly by while the game changes so radically under his aegis, but to also ask him to change the rules and to break tradition to enable it seems like not really something he's going to be all that eager to do. Yeah, and I mean, does anyone want to see more pitching changes? No one tunes in to see pitching changes. People complain about how many there are already and how long games take already, and there are constantly initiatives to think of ways to shorten the game. So I can't imagine this makes

it a better spectator sport. Plus, people like to see scoring, I think. And if you did this, then there would be even more strikeouts and fewer balls in play and fewer runs scored. And I think just on the whole, it would be a much less entertaining game. I think just on the whole it would be a much less entertaining game. So let me ask you this. When do you predict there will be something like an all bullpen staff for a real Major League Baseball team? How many years from now or never? Well, I think it will continue to get closer to that.

I think it will continue to get closer to that. I think it will approach that. I don't know that there will come a time when there is no differentiation at all between starters and relievers. I think probably you'd at least have sort of a first among relievers who goes, I don't know, four innings or three innings before you get into the one and two inning guys. So I don't know that you would ever get to a state where you're using seven pitchers to get through every game or eight pitchers to get through every game. But I think we will probably continue to approach that point. And I mean, the lack of emphasis on pitcher wins, I think that is one of the greatest obstacles to it is that pitcher wins still get people paid and pitchers are not pleased about missing out on wins. So as that continues to be marginalized and isn't as big a part of, you know, there's not as much financial incentive to going five innings. I don't know whether they'll change the rule for wins or whether people will just stop paying attention to them, but that would remove one obstacle. And I would

guess that it would continue to approach that point, but probably never get there as long as the 25-man roster is in place. Yeah, I think that, well, one of the things that might end up enabling it is that the 26th guy is probably going to get added for a totally unrelated reason. I mean, it's only a matter of time, I think, until teams add a 26th guy for bargaining reasons, right? The players want it and um you know the way the game kind of the way the game as is sort of argues for it uh so it'll probably happen uh and that might enable this sort of strategy later i think that the um i think what you're saying about how

there will still be the the sort of premium pitcher who might go three or four or five. That, I think, is true if lots of teams do this, because then essentially you would have the talent would still be distributed throughout the league, and if you have Verlander, you're not going to use him exactly as often as you're going to use Phil Cope. However, if you're talking about one team doing it, then basically the reason that one team would do it is that it's a way of building an effective pitching staff for close to the minimum by not signing any of these starters who cost so much money. I could see one team doing it in a very pure

and fairly balanced way. I think if multiple teams are doing it, though, I think you're right. So I would guess that some team will try something awfully close to this within 18 years. Okay. I'd buy that. But only one team. I don't think it catches on in the next. I don't think it catches on. I don't think it catches on.

So will it be a failure or will it just be not successful enough to persuade people to change their ways? My guess is that it's not as effective as it sounds. All right. So we have six days roughly for you to get new, six days and 23 hours basically for you to get new six days and 23 hours basically for you to get new emails in so email podcast at baseball prospectus.com for next week's show weird questions are perfectly acceptable we'll be back tomorrow with topics to discuss