Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2085: Do You Want an Award?

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a low-suspense awards week, the vastly varying paths to being a major league manager, the latest sign of the Angels player-development apocalypse, Brian Cashman on Giancarlo Stanton, the death of Padres owner Peter Seidler, Michael Jordan’s baseball career on For All Mankind, how much holding runners matters, and […]

It's Effectively Wild, so stick around, you'll be well beguiled. It's Effectively Wild, like Nolan Ryan was sometimes. Sometimes It's sports week in Major League Baseball, and I have carefully studied the matter. I have given it great consideration. I have reflected. I have examined my own feelings, and I have reached the conclusion that I couldn't care less. Oh, wow. Yeah.

I don't think it would be possible for me to care less. Wow. And I think that's because there's no suspense whatsoever, right? There's no suspense. Now, I've generally cared less about award voting and awards results over time anyway. I've kind of come to the conclusion that the seasons were what they were, and we can evaluate them as we see fit. see fit, and the word of 30 of our colleagues in the BBWA, or even you, as the case may be, and as the vote or award may be, not this year, right, but some years, it doesn't sway me, really, I guess. It doesn't change my appreciation all that much of what a player did or didn't do. But beyond that, my larger shift toward not caring so much about awards results, there just don't seem to be any bits of uncertainty when it comes to these races. Aren't there just such clear favorites that I don't know if every

result will be unanimous, but I wouldn't be shocked if that were the case. Every result will be unanimous, but I wouldn't be shocked if that were the case. Do I think that they'll all be unanimous? I don't know, Ben. I don't know. I don't know either. I think they'll all be unanimous. I haven't, hasn't been the axis on which I am gauging these things. The ones that we've learned so far were unanimous, unsurprisingly. Corbin Carroll,

Gunnar Henderson won their respective Rookie of the Year races. Those were not only unsurprising after the season, but in a sense, unsurprising before the season. In fact, you predicted it. I did. I did. They were the top two prospects in baseball and they won rookie of the year. Now, obviously, the odds weren't in favor of the top two prospects winning. Things happen. You probably take the field over the favorites, but they were the favorites. In fact, I believe you're predicting that in the preseason's prediction podcast, clinched your victory. I've heard from Chris Hannell that it would be difficult or impossible

for you to lose the preseason predictions game. So everything's coming up meg this year, draft-wise and competition-wise. I'm just never gonna repeat this particular success, right? Yeah. Yeah. This is your imperial phase. You're having a really great year. Maybe we'll revisit those predictions in an episode at some point once it's all said and done or just about said and done. You got those slow days during Christmas and New Year's. We'll need to create some content. But, yeah, the fact that you foresaw this happening and it wasn't a wild prediction at the time, really, arguably wasn't even that bold. No. I think just speaks to how predictable these races seem to be. And it just seems like,

yeah, Otani is going to win the MVP and Acuna is almost certainly going to win the MVP. It became a race for a while. Mookie made it interesting, but Acuna finished so strong. Mookie didn't really. It just seems like that's going to be Acuna. And then the pitching races, it seems like it's almost certainly going to be Cole and Snell. You could make cases that other pitchers are deserving, certainly with Snell, certainly if you're looking at some wars instead of others. But it just seems like it's sad. It's a fait accompli, like those guys are going to win, right?

So unless you get excited about will it be unanimous or not, then I don't know what there is to be waiting with bated breath to watch the reveals this week. Yeah, I think I generally agree with that. I could see the pitching awards not being unanimous. Yes. Would I go so far as to say I'd be surprised if they're unanimous? I might be a little surprised if they're unanimous. Not a lot surprised. Like if we're, you know, on a sliding scale of surprise from like,

well, do I want to invoke world events no i don't want to do that but like um you know if i if i were going to to try to um rate my surprise i would be like medium surprised um but not like knocked over surprise bowled over surprise they probably shouldn't be unanimous. I mean, Snell was sixth in Van Graaff's pitcher war in the National League, right? And, you know, like he's going to win because he had lots of wins and low ERA and everything. And I know it's 2023. And so it doesn't seem like that should matter. I guess he was only 14 and 9.

I didn't even know what his win-loss record was. But he had a 2.25 ERA. We've evolved past that then. Yeah. And he had a FIP that was more than a run higher than his ERA. And as we know, he had an extremely high walk rate, like one of the highest walk rates for a qualifying pitcher in recent years, the highest this year, and he worked around it, and you could give him credit for that or not. So if people didn't give him credit for that, if some voters said, no, I think he got a little lucky or whatever, that was timing and not his own better performance with runners in scoring position and stranding runners, then I would understand that vote. But it just seems like just putting my finger in the air, feeling the sentiment, which way the winds are blowing,

it seems like that is basically a done deal. Yeah, the FIP spirit has moved you and moved you in that direction. I mean, he does better if you do, you know, if you go to our combined war leader boards, you can determine sort of what version of pitching war you want to see. And like, you know, I think looking at a 50-50 split for awards votes is reasonable. It's a useful thing to do. And he rates much better by that score, by that metric. You know know he's at 5.7 war i think that puts him in the league for nl pitchers it does yes um so you know scooches him ahead of wheeler by that score so and and certainly ahead of you know gallon and web and the rest so because he has a huge lead in ra9 based

war which is just how many runs were allowed when you were on the mound, which some people look at awards voting based on that. I've made the case that FIP is not like imaginary, theoretical, abstract. It's not a difference between what actually happened and some imaginary reality. It's looking at what the pitcher can control. But a lot of voters, understandably, I guess, look at RA-A-9 and that kind of metric. And he leads the lead by a lot in that. Yeah. And I'm not such a partisan that I think that FIP is perfect.

some cushion for it perhaps not doing a perfect job of accounting for, you know, some of the batted ball stuff being under a pitcher's control. I think that's fine. You know, I'm not here to be a problem, Ben. You know, I'm not here to be an instigator. I would knock him more for um being just like a terrible viewing experience than than i would give people a hard time for putting too much store in um his era so that's that's where i'm at and i get to say that because i didn't have an nl cy young vote so good you know oh excuse me i did a swear and then like a big one spicy um but yeah like he he just just ranks really high for me on the good God, this is a slog scale. And, you know, that's reflected in some of his stats, like say his walk rate. So that's sort of where I land on Snell. I do like how I was like kind of, I was in there.

I was close to being able to get my Cy Young prediction right. And, you know, I should have been a little less specific and then I would have rated even higher because I had Gallon Webb as one and two and that's not going to happen. But if I just said top three, I would have been rolling. I would have been rolling in prediction money, you know? Yeah, yeah. But I got greedy and tried to be specific. So that's, you know, that's a shame on Meg kind of situation. But I think it's all fine. The right rookies won the respective rookie races. I even think that the down ballot stuff worked out pretty well. So there's that.

It's always interesting when a race is like the thing that an awards voter is really spending their time agonizing over is like their down ballot considerations um which is good you know you should agonize over that because even if it's not winning rookie of the year it means something to these guys and their monetary impacts for um for them as well so you know definitely something you want to take seriously but yeah like uh i'm whelmed by the awards voting you know i've been heartened that we have all looked at the the fip debate and have seemingly largely you know like we're in uh mad max fury road and gone that's bait you know we't have to, we don't have to do it again. We can decide not to, we can decide to not. And we largely have because we care about ourselves

and our fellows is what I've learned. Yeah. Sometimes, even though I don't care so much about the honor, obviously the players care about the honor and happy for them. And it's, you know, if you enjoy Garrett Cole's career, as I have much of the time, nice to see him win a Cy Young. It's almost surprising that he hadn't won one yet. It is. It's so surprising that every time someone says it, I think they're wrong. I don't believe it. It takes me a moment and I feel compelled to go check and make sure that it's true.

Yeah, because he had a fine season. Perhaps this is not his best season, I guess, by baseball reference where it actually is. But I think most people wouldn't consider this is his best season. But he's getting one after a bunch of close calls. And that's nice. He's getting one after a bunch of close calls, and that's nice. But yeah, they're just, you know, it's not a year when you have a lot of really close nail-biting, could-go-either-way, 50-50 type of races. It's almost, it's like we were pre-spoiled because the results are predictable, other than, I guess, manager of the year. So if you count that as a major awards race, then I guess there's some suspense there.

But it's not something I'm super interested in just because it never really seems to be anything other than which team exceeded expectations or whatever. Like, even if you're covering teams, there's only so much you actually get to see, right? So awards voting can be interesting if it is a referendum on how we evaluate players. And that's always limited because, again, it's just a subset. It's just 30 people voting on each award. So it's not like every baseball media member collectively speaking with one voice. are times or when there have been times where it's like, oh, maybe attitudes are changing about batting average or RBI or wins and losses or whatever, then that can be kind of interesting. Or does FIP matter more now than ERA or win-loss record?

Well, Kevin Gossman might have more Cy Young awards if that were the case, I guess. But I don't know. It's just not super interesting to me or super compelling this year in particular, unless I guess you're into the down ballot parsing, as you said. And if you're like, Matt McClain was robbed finishing fifth

and rookie of the year voting in the NLE, should have been higher. Then you can debate about that stuff. But I just, I don't have the energy for that anymore. You are exhausted. You know, we really are down on discourse for a podcast that's dependent on a lot of baseball news, you know. Yeah. I guess people may have assumed the worst about the BBWA when it came to revealing results because of past precedent, right?

Well, sure. Yeah. Wasn't there some prior year where the— I think there was a prior year where they just— Yeah, the awards? Well, sure. Yeah. Wasn't there some prior year where the— I think there was a prior year where they just— Yeah, the awards voters were— Yeah. Yeah. I get it.

The Hall of Fame announcements sometimes being revealed by, like, the BBWA websites and what pages return what responses when you try to access those URLs before the awards came out. So it's not the best track record, technologically speaking. It could stand to improve. And I would be the first to tell you that it could stand to improve. But that's why I think in this particular moment, I have to say, look, I regret to inform that while it makes sense in this particular instance, it didn't make sense. Yeah. So maybe this is a letdown or maybe it's a reprieve. If you're sick of arguing over awards results, then we don't really have to do that this year.

It doesn't seem like it unless there's some unpredictable event that happens over the rest of this week, in which case I will eat my words and we will return to this topic. Can I ask a question about awards voting ephemera that might interest you? So I am always intrigued and amused by like the, you know, like the first of all, MLB Network, God bless them. They're getting an hour out of that announcement. It don't matter if both rookie of the years are unanimous selections. They're getting their hour out of that announcement. It don't matter if both Rookie of the Year's are unanimous selections. They're getting their hour, man. Yeah. that we get as a result of this, right? And so, like, Gunner is there with his family and, you know, associated folk, which I imagine involved, included, like, his agent and whatnot. And then Corbin Carroll had, like, a lot of Diamondbacks folks there, right? It was, like, at a bar or restaurant somewhere in the valley here, I assume, just based on who all was there.

And, you know, he's got his family and he, you know, his sister is on, like, Zoom or whatever. And then, like, you know, Troy Lovello's there, and Pavin Smith, and Alec Thomas, and Brandon Fott, and, like, a bunch of other young D-backs guys. And, you know, I think that both things are nice. It's like, it's nice to be at your family home and to be surrounded by the people who have been a part of all of this for you for a really long time.

And then, you know, I quite liked like the idea of including all of these folks from the team who he seems to be close with and who, you know, aided in his success and the success of his season. Who would you, what would your approach be, Ben? Or would you be one of those people that's like, oh no, the wifi has gone down. Surely we cannot possibly share anything from here. Like who would be in my, my posse,

my entourage at an awards reception? Hmm. I don't know. I should be on brand for me just to be like sitting in some dark room inside somewhere by myself. Grumpkin on your lap being like, here's my dog. Yes. That might be how I went with it. But I don't know.

I'm sure family and friends would want to celebrate with me on a big day, even if I would rather not be at a celebration in my honor. Yeah. It did. It was a funny moment because, you know, they have to do the close zoom on carol to like do his interview and his mom is like entirely in frame and then you were like your dad is so much taller because we have this like you know headless body just on the other side of him because of how they had had to zoom in to do the interview. I was like, oh, Corbin, you ended up, you know, leaning toward the mom's side of the genetic pool when

it came to Hydenia. Well, worked out fine for him so far, at least in MLB. So speaking of kind of unpredictable things and manager of the year awards, Choshian made this point that managerial hiring is almost like the last bastion of diversity in strategies and everything. Not necessarily diversity in the makeup of the managers, although it's been a little bit better in the hiring so far this offseason. But just in the sense that you just never know what approach a team is going to opt for when it comes to deciding what at least historically has been a pretty important position for a team. And even if it's more of a middle manager role, still, you know, this is someone who's like a public face of your organization and does have a fair amount of power over this multibillion dollar business that many millions of people care about. And there's just such a disparity between the types of people who will get hired by teams in the same offseason and sometimes even the same team interviewing certain candidates who come from all sorts of different backgrounds

and ages and experiences. And there's no consensus on, oh, well, you're going to go get a manager. Well, this is the best type of manager to get. This is the background you want. This is the age and experience you want. Like just this offseason, we've seen Steven Vogt get hired, who is a former player who is still in his 30s, just turned 39, has no managerial experience and one year of bullpen coach experience. Right. And then on the other end of things, you have Ron Washington, who is 71 years old and a former manager but hasn't been a manager for almost a decade. And his previous managerial tenure ended under not the greatest circumstances.

Sure. But he is respected as a coach, of course. And that's just, I mean, those are, you know, I guess both former players. So they have that alike. And obviously, you know, everyone's a dude still. So that is always alike. But you have that disparity in just age and managing and coaching experience. Then you have some teams that are like, well, let's go get the pre-vetted managers who've

been with other teams and have been successful and respected. So Craig Council and Bob Melvin, okay, sure. They kind of come pre-approved. And then you have the bench coach route that we've seen a few teams go down, right? Gosh, we've already had, what, seven managerial hires this offseason? Yeah, it's been a busy offseason for it, yeah. And the Brewers still need a new person. But we've had Joe Espada gets hired by the Astros,

and he's been the longtime bench coach there. And Pat Murphy gets hired, it seems like, by the Brewers, right? And it's the Padres who still have to figure out what's going on. The Brewers, it seems like, even if it hasn't officially been announced, Pat Murphy has taken over. Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah, both of those cases, you have the bench coach who's been the manager's right-hand man for quite a while with that team. And then you have Carlos Mendoza, who has also been a bench coach for a New York team, although not the New York team that know, played in college, played in the minors, although not the same path because Pat Murphy was a college coach and, you know, his exact trajectory is quite unusual. So there's just this great divergence in like the best practices, as they say.

I don't even know if there is a best practice. And so when we pass judgment on these moves to the extent that we do, we're usually just like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. You know, it's like they're going in completely different directions, reaching for completely different kinds of candidates. And who knows? Like, we don't know if that was a good move or a bad move. We may never know. We certainly don't know now. Right.

But what are we going to base that on? So Joe was talking about how there seems to be increasing agreement on how to play the game in a lot of ways, like stylistically and aesthetically. in a lot of ways, like stylistically and aesthetically. And yet, there seems to be very little agreement when it comes to what kind of manager do you want? What pool are you pulling from? And there's not enough of an agreement to say that was right or that was wrong, because you can find bad hires or good hires, at least results wise, on any of those categories, any of those genres, you know, like former manager who's done it well, former manager who hasn't done it in a long time, former player who's never managed or barely coached, bench coach. Like we've seen, you know, this genre, all of these genres, and some of them have succeeded and some of them have failed.

And I don't know if you could even do a study to say, yeah, usually it works out more often. There's a higher hit rate when you do this, when you get that kind of manager. I don't know. The results would be all over the board probably. I find the sort of variance team to team pretty unsurprising, actually, if only because you're right that there are these different sort of paths and there have been instances of success and failure across pretty much all of them. And teams are going to have different sort of organizational needs that is sometimes going to be driven by the particular composition of the

roster. Like maybe you have a team that has like a lot of young up and coming guys and you are hiring a manager because you think he has a particular sort of talent in getting the most out of rookies and helping to sort of shepherd those guys through not only as players, but potentially as people. So like maybe you have a manager who you think is really adept at that. Maybe you have a manager who, you know, has demonstrated a particular sort of savvy when it comes to a roster that is in the midst of a rebuild and isn't ready for competition, but who is good at giving, you know, the front office feedback on, yeah, we're trying this guy out to see what we have in him. And I think he's

good, or I think he, you know, isn't part of our long-term future. Or, you know, maybe you have a manager who's really good at managing and sort of navigating the different personalities in a clubhouse when you have a lot of established veterans, some of whom are big stars, you know. So I think that because the baseline analytics acumen of front offices is, I'm not going to say that it's equal or that everyone's as good at it, but like, you know, it's certainly a more level playing field when it comes to the ability of a front office to give good feedback to a manager about in-game strategy and lineup you know stuff and bullpen optimization like it it doesn't surprise me that the thing that was that would maybe be driving the hiring decisions there would

lay away from that and be you know some assessment on the part of either ownership or the front office about, you know, this guy fits our particular needs around personnel. Now, that doesn't mean that they're going to be right every time they make those selections, right? But I find it pretty unsurprising because you don't need, you know, most teams don't need a guy to come in and be like, did you know that we should be putting our better hitters toward the top of the lineup? Like, everybody knows that, you know? And I think that even some of the more nitty-gritty lineup matchup decisions, like, you know, maybe you think that you need someone who's like really in the weeds on analytics if your matchup considerations are more sophisticated than that. And I think most teams are. Like. They're not just looking at handedness, right? But even there, I think that the floor is so much higher than it used to be that you can kind of prioritize other stuff.

Yeah, I guess the same factors that make it difficult to evaluate whether someone has been good at the job make it difficult to evaluate whether someone has been good at the job, make it difficult to evaluate whether someone will be good at the job. And because it is more personality based, as you're saying, then it does make sense that it would vary. Not that clubhouse fit and all of that doesn't matter for players, but it matters less. It matters more for managers. It's just how are they going to get along with the players and how are they going to get along with people making decisions above them, ownership and the front office and everything. So, yeah, it is still striking, though, that one team's like, yeah, Carlos Mendoza, he's our guy. And another team's like, Ron Washington. It's just completely different, you know. And maybe that's kind of fun and nice. It's not everyone going with exactly the same mold of manager, at least in some respects. And I like that we have good examples of, you know, success and failure across sort of types, right? Because it just doesn't, intuitively, it makes sense to me

that different orgs with different people, both, you know, in terms of your player population and also your front office and coaching staff, that they're not going to all have the exact same set of needs. Of course, they're going to be different. And it would be very disorienting to my understanding of human beings if like, it was like, like no there's only one kind that's good you know i and i think that you know particularly as we try to prioritize getting different kinds of people in senior leadership positions within organizations like not that you know all managers of color are one way and all white managers are another that's that's not true at all but i think that there being a lot of different kinds of ways to succeed at that is just, you know, it opens more avenues for different kinds of people with different backgrounds,

whether it's, you know, how long they played, what kind of managerial experience they had, whether they're, you know, they were hitters or pitchers. Like, it's just good for there to be a lot of different kinds of ways to successfully shepherd an organization through because the odds that you get a lot of different kinds of folks filling those roles seem higher to me, which might be, I don't know, maybe that's optimistic on my part. But it does seem like, you know, we want there to be a lot of different kinds of ways to do stuff. And I think that like, to the extent that managers are one of the primary front facing parts of an organization, like I also think it's fun when we just get different personality types. You know,

if everybody's the same, it's like those manager standups at the end of games are so boring. And so it's good for us to have a lot of different kinds of personalities too, just from i think an entertainment perspective so you getting a cold there ben yeah a little bit yeah sorry bud i know it's uh yep just being a parent ben can i just say uh and normally we would cut your coughs out but now i'm going to talk about it so we'll leave it in um still uh no uh downstairs issues for old meg managed to not get neurovirus yeah yeah yeah how about that see how many ways you can refer to it euphemistically that aren't gross everyone you know you got crummy tummy you got downstairs problems

it could encompass all manner of things, right? Vague to the point of, you know, blurring the imagination in an important way. Okay? Yeah. Do it for my mentions. Some slight upstairs issues. Yes. Yeah. Your attic is full of bats. Yeah. I was kind of on vocal rest to prepare for the podcast and hadn't talked much. And usually that's good.

Give the vocal cords a rest and then you won't strain them too much. But in this case, it's kind of backfired because not having talked all day and now talking a lot, all the fluids are like, oh, you expect. We must come up. Yeah, you expect to speak now in this manner. Okay, well, I'm going to interfere with that process. Anyway, on that subject of different strokes for different folks. I was really worried you were going to take it back to downstairs issues and I was going to have to protest. No, but different ways to, what do people say, peel an onion?

Is that an expression? That sounds what do people say, peel an onion? Is that an expression? That sounds like something people say. I mean, people do peel onions because the paper on the outside, and it's so sticky. Why is it so sticky? It's like that with garlic, too. That's why you got to smash it. Well, my eyes are watering right now, but not for onion-related reasons. But I just read Sam Blum's latest for The Athletic, which is, you know, the latest disconcerting expose about the Angels.

And he just published this before we started recording. Apparently, the Angels are taking cues from former Angels great closer Troy Percival when it comes to player development. So during Instructs in the fall, minor league instructional camp, the Angels invited Troy Percival to come work with some of their prospects. And he was not a fan of what he saw and how technology was being used. He said, this is a quote to The Athletic, I'm not one that's big on using the iPads. This is a guy who's been head coach at UC Riverside for several seasons. I understand it.

I had to understand it through college coaching. I just feel like we need to have coaches with eyes that can see things and put their hands on people and fix them. It's really difficult to look at an iPad and think that it can make the adjustments that it needs to make. look at an iPad and think that it can make the adjustments that it needs to make. And subsequent to that, the Angels fired a couple of their highest ranking pitching instructors, their pitching coordinator and pitching performance coordinator, a couple of guys, at least one of whom had been the recipient of some praise from pitchers and seemed to have helped them and was being able to provide data, etc. And the Angels did not attribute this to Percival. But according to Blum's reporting, Percival's opinion was part of the decision, at least.

And they're kind of they're going lower tech. The Angels are going old school here when it comes to coaching. And the way that Percival describes it, it's almost like a laying on of hands is what he's talking about. Put their hands on people and fix them. It doesn't sound super scientific. there's something to working with someone without an iPad as your intermediary, certainly, that you want to be able to communicate with them. And obviously, it's probably a plus to be able to pick up on some things just with your plain old eyes. But there are some things that are very difficult to see with your eyes, right? Whether it's something like spin rate on a pitch or whether it's, you know, just like little subtle movements in your body that happen too fast for the human eye to see

or little differences in your grip, right? That there's just no way you can see without slowing that down, getting a high-speed camera, right? So this is, I guess, the latest in a long line of angel stories that are like, uh-oh, this doesn't sound so great. But that's, again, just another indication of different ways to do things. Now, this doesn't sound like a great way because, again there are certain things that you just you can't see so i don't discount experience and obviously communication but right being able to have those

tools can you be over reliant on those tools of course yeah and uh can you be too techno babbly when you're talking to players yes i'm sure you can you can. But saying, I don't want the iPads, or we just need people who can kind of look at you and size you up and, you know, put their hands on you and say, do this, not that, and voila, you're better. I don't know that that sounds like a better way to do things. So, I'm not quite confident that I'm going to articulate my thought here just right on the first try. So, stick with me, Ben. But I think that like there's a generous read of what he was saying his feedback was on his observations of instructs that isn't necessarily wrong, right? You were kind of alluding to this where I think that, you know,

there probably is something to be said, whether we understand it in terms of what a coach is able to discern with their naked eye or just what it feels like to be a player and have what you perceive to be sort of intense and focused attention on the part of a coach as opposed to someone who's like in the iPad all the time. So like, I don't know which of those it really falls under. It's probably a mix of both. But, you know, I think there's something to be said for like, there being times where that is the most appropriate way to interface coach to player. You know, I didn't observe much of, I didn't observe any of Angel's Instructs this year, so I don't know if there was an issue there.

But I could imagine being a player and being in a modern player dev setting and at times feeling frustrated by how mediated by technology it might feel, right? Or it's like, well, like can you just watch me for a little bit and like give me your thoughts on this you know like i could i don't struggle to imagine that being frustrating for players um particularly if the player in question is one who doesn't really engage with you know all of the sort of metrics and stats and wants it sort of explained to them or wants to have a conversation on slightly different terms than, you know, we tend to think of as like the result of a lot of rigor in that process. So, I think that there can be a generous interpretation of what he is seeing

and perhaps useful feedback for the angels within that interpretation, right? Yeah. My general perception of the angels as sort of an organization and the place where i think they get into trouble with this stuff isn't so much in there being like nothing to take away from what an experienced player might observe in an instructional setting it's more that they seem like they're kind of buffeted about by the most recent thing they heard a lot of the time, you know, and I think that when you look at organizations that have a really good track record in player dev, not even just necessarily on the pitching side, but, you know, they're able to sort of be dynamic and marry the approach that is going to work the best for the player in question to the form that the feedback takes and understand that that isn't going to be a one size fits all kind of a thing.

And that there are plenty of players who are like, just tell me what to do. You know, like, don't tell me like all that. I don't need to know why. I need to know what. And I think that there are players and we might, you know, as people who, like, get really wrapped up in the why, might be like, well, I can't believe that that would be true. But I think that if you're unable to engage with these guys sort of where they live, you're not going to be able to do the most with them in terms of maximizing their performance. So it's important for them to be able to hear what player dev folks need to tell them

in a way that is going to result in the change being made. Because ultimately, you don't win points for the most analytical process. You win baseball games by being able to help maximize your guys so there's that piece of it but it does feel like it's like it's truly whatever the most recent thing they heard is sometimes and it's you know it's like you gotta be able to ingest feedback like that sit with it think about how it fits into your broader sort of approach to player dev understand does this feedback like necessitate a wholesale change is it just a tweak you know and i don't know that they're always doing a good job of like the internal self

scouting there yeah you know i think that they are right to think like hey we have not had a Yeah. Now, I don't know if, you know, if we were to survey every pitcher in the Angels orbit, would they all say like, these guys were great. Why are you getting rid of them? I don't know the answer to that. So, you know, it could be that there's more here that we aren't getting a sense desperate, but like they know the stakes of the pitching stuff. They know how bad it's been. And they're just trying to grab on to anything that might push them in the right direction. And I think that when that's kind of the spot you seem to be in as an organization, you leave yourself vulnerable to like overreacting to the most recent piece of information you've received. Yeah. And Sam's piece makes it sound like it's part of a trend. to like overreacting to the most recent piece of information you've received. So yeah. And Sam's piece makes it sound like it's part of a trend. Other coaches in front office, people being let go or old people being brought back.

And maybe it's kind of a general retrenchment. So I don't know. It's not like what they have been doing lately has worked so well that I'm sure if it had been super successful, they would be inclined to keep doing that. And yeah, it's not like having iPads or having whatever the iPads are connected to is enough. You actually have to know what to do with them and how to communicate that information and everything. And I don't know that they were good at that, but yeah. And on that same subject of different people doing things in different ways and speaking in different ways, we talked about Brian Cashman and his stand up at the GM meetings last week. And I don't know why this particular comment didn't surface or didn't come to my attention until this week, but he also talked there about Giancarlo Stanton.

And what I was saying about Cashman at the time was that, like, I don't know if it's good for him to be talking so frankly in some ways, or at least, like, you know, if he's not being completely candid about internal things, at least, like like when it comes to his thoughts and feelings and emotions. He seems to be unusually open about those things and unusually feisty and combative. And he was asked, I guess, about Stanton. He said, we've got to get Stanton up and running again. Sounds like he's like a computer that is on the fritz or something. Just got to reboot him. He's injury prone. We all have lived and known that.

But he's never not hit when he's playing. And this year is the first time that that's happened. And he went on to say some other stuff about Stanton. He was talking about whether they can make Stanton any faster or more flexible or nimbler. Didn't I recommend that he start swimming more? That was my solution at one point. But Cashman said, it's been something that we've been working through and working on for a long time without the results that we want.

I don't have an answer to that. I know he's frustrated by it. We know he's certainly better than what he saw last year. And then he said, this was the quote that probably got the most attention. We try to limit the time he's down, but I'm not going to tell you he's going to play every game next year because he's not. He's going to wind up getting hurt again, more likely than not, because it seems to be part of his game. But I know that when he's right and healthy, other than this past year, the guy's a great hitter and has been for a long time. So he did

say some complimentary stuff, but being that frank about just, yeah, he's going to get hurt. Like he always gets hurt. It's not a lie or anything. And we know this to be true about Stanton. He seems like he's in incredible shape and yet also is incredibly brittle in a baseball sense. Yeah. So I would think fans might appreciate the GM just kind of coming out and saying what they all know to be true, which is that, yeah, Stanton has a tough time staying on the field. But you don't usually hear someone state that so plainly.

You don't usually hear someone state that so plainly. And apparently there was a response by Stanton's agent, Joel Wolf, who said, I read the context of the entire interview. I think it's a good reminder for all free agents considering signing in New York, both foreign and domestic, that to play for that team, you've got to be made of Teflon, both mentally and physically, because you can never let your guard down even in the offseason. So, you know, it sounds like he's a little miffed on behalf of his client that he's catching strays like that at the GM meetings. And as people have pointed out, Joel Wolfe also represents Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whom the Yankees have expressed a lot of interest in. And Wolf is referring to free agents, foreign and domestic. So again, is it a good thing to be so open about pointing out players' weaknesses and struggles? Maybe not, but it is in some sense refreshing.

Maybe not, but it is in some sense refreshing. I find it refreshing. It's just there are 29 executives who talk one way and then there's Brian Cashman who's just like, yeah, I don't care. I'm just going to say whatever, just going to speak my truth here and you can do with it what you will. I just don't feel like it's necessarily the best personnel management like litigating this stuff publicly like for a guy who's still on your roster and for whom you're like potentially trying to like institute some sort of change in the way he's approaching maybe his off-season conditioning it just doesn't feel like it's likely to result in anything trade him or something yeah like yeah you know what what benefit is there to doing it this way either to you if you're you know intent on keeping him

on the roster or to you if you're not you know it just doesn't seem like the best thing and you're right like you know uh agents tend to have more than one client. So it's, you know, maybe puts you on your back foot from a, you know, negotiating perspective, too. who like tell it like it is or at least tell it like he sees it i guess there could be some some sort of you know if like players are afraid of getting thrown under the bus by their gm like that doesn't seem like it would be a good thing probably i guess he might see it as as like it's like when he came out and and said what they offered a Judge in their extension talks last spring, which Judge apparently wasn't very happy about, right? And so maybe he thought like, well, we thought it was a good offer. And then, you know, Judge had an incredible season and it turned out not to be what he was worth or what he could command anyway.

But maybe Cashman thought, well, we'll put this out there and people won't fault us for him not signing this extension. But then do you make him upset? Does that cost you down the road? So I don't know. It doesn't seem like it's the greatest way to go about things. And it's probably why other executives do not go about things that way. But it's just different.

It's just a little more entertaining at least when you get these spicy quotes instead of just the word salads. Like any other executives probably would have been like, yeah, Giancarlo is an important part of our team and we're trying to have him change some things. And we think he's going to be a big part of our team and he's going to have a bounce back year.

And we look forward to seeing him in spring training and he works really hard and on and on. Right. Not just like, yeah, he's going to get hurt. We know that. You all know that. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

It's different. Yeah. And even like, look, do I think he's wrong that Stanton is likely to get hurt? I mean, I don't think so. I don't think that he is. he's wrong that stanton is likely to get hurt i mean no i don't think so i think that he is but like you know um we just talked about how you may you hire managers maybe sometimes to do the stuff that isn't um like determining who comes out of the bullpen first and one of those things is like managing people and i do think that there's value in recognizing that, like, you know, everybody

hears what you say at the GM meetings. So, like, you know, I don't know how productive this approach is. He sounds like other executives might sound off the record, except he's on the record and knows it. So, yeah. And a bit of breaking news while we've been recording this episode. Oh, yeah. Another person in baseball who has done things differently and in a welcome way in recent years. Peter Seidler, Padres chairman, owner, has died. And it was known that he had had a lot of health issues. He had had cancer for years, multiple times,

right? And there's no cause of death or details right now. But it was not a surprise, obviously, that he was fighting for his health and his life at times. He was just 63 years old, but sad to see him go. He's obviously has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to MLB owners too, even though the Padres season didn't work out the way that he hoped it would this year. He was willing to talk a different game and also back that up with actions and spending. So I don't know whether people will learn from his example or not or will do something similar. But he certainly seemed like an outlier at times and not being Steve Cohen with the Mets, but for the Padres to be doing what Seidler did in recent years. It made us think for a while and feel for a while like, oh, is this a good owner? I can't speak to the person, but just to feel good about how your owner is operating,

that alone is unusual enough. Yeah. I think that he was the rare example, unfortunately rare in today's game, and I don't have a perspective on him as a person, but it felt like he was very directionally aligned with his fans in terms of what he wanted and what he expected from San Diego and what he was willing to sort of offer in terms of resources to try to make that happen. And it was really refreshing to have an owner where you're like, this guy wants to win. His goal is to bring a World Series to this city. You know, it certainly felt like he understood the opportunity that was present for them as a team where they were the only major for men's sports in that city. And he could really make it a baseball town. So that's a real loss for the game and certainly for his family and the fan base. So it sucks. It would be nice if some owners really had that spirit of spending who weren't faced with their own mortality. Because that was often the refrain about Mike Illich

in Detroit before he died was just like, hey, it's an advanced age. Like he wants to win a World Series before he goes. And people said the same thing about Seidler. He's been sick, like he wants to win. And yeah, it'd be nice if we had that urgency that wasn't directly related to like, I want to win one before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Mortal coil, yeah. You know, most owners, once you advance to the point where you're able to buy a baseball team, they're not young for the most part.

But yeah, it does seem like sometimes the particularly older ones, not always, though, there's always Jerry Reinsdorf out there, I guess, who's just like, yeah, it'd be nice if we won one, but I'm not going to do everything I can to make that happen necessarily. Yeah. And, you know, we don't know what this means for the Padres as a franchise, although I don't imagine that's the primary concern today. Yeah. The other finances and their direction was already a matter of some consternation and uncertainty as it was before this news. So, yeah. Yeah. Man, that sucks. It does.

So, a couple last things. I want to finish with a stat blast here. Do our stat blast early this week. You don't watch For All Mankind, right? No, I have been told by many people that I should. By you, by Bauman, by, you know, the internet at large. I just haven't, I haven't yet. Yeah, Bauman and I are big femme evangelists.

So we'll buttonhole anyone who comes near us and say, have you watched Fra Mankind? Its fourth season just started on Apple TV+. Anyway, as you may have seen, this is relevant to you because when each season starts, this is like an alternate past sort of scenario where like the Soviets land on the moon first and then history changes as a result of that. So some things are the same, but some other big things are different and people become president who didn't actually become president and people live who died and so on and so on. And at the start of each new season, there's a bit of a montage that shows how things have changed since the last season, because there's usually a time jump, and those are all always fun. It's like kind of a newsreel of what happened over the past several years, and you get to spot

these little Easter eggs of, oh, this is familiar, oh, this is different, and in this one, sometimes there are baseball-related vignettes in here, and in this one, there was one related to the Mariners. Apparently, in this alternate timeline, the Mariners acquired Michael Jordan, who remained a baseball player. So in 1997, there's a little news item here in a Seattle newspaper called The World Look that says Mariners-Jordan reach divisional round. And, you know, they still had Randy Johnson having dominant pitching performances, but the Mariners in this timeline, they won the AL West with the help of Michael Jordan and a three-run homer he hit. So not only did he remain a baseball player and get to the majors, but he went on to play for the Mariners. So that's exciting. That's a timeline that I would

have subscribed to. I mean, the Mariners won the division that year, even in real life, but sadly, not with Michael Jordan. In that timeline, would you watch college baseball? Probably not, but who knows? Yeah, so that's fun. This news article also mentions Oakland's Mark McGuire, except it's spelled M-C-G-U-I-R-E, not with a W, but with a U, which makes me wonder

whether this is just a typo or whether this is not the Mark McGuire we know, but a different Mark McGuire with a slightly different spelling who was also on Oakland and hitting home runs in 1997. Who knows? Yeah. Anyway, that's fun. I also wanted to shout out some research that was done first by the folks at MLB. They're always rolling out new stat cast tools over there, right? And so Mike Petriello wrote up their new stats about the running game and how pitchers are able to affect it. So they already had stats about catchers,

but as we know, holding runners, preventing advancements may have more to do with pitchers than catchers in many cases. And so now they have all kinds of stats here about who's good at holding runners, who's bad at holding runners and, you know, who gets longer leads, who allows longer leads and shorter leads. You can go back to John Lester back in his days of not being able to throw over to first, which was a constant podcast topic in those days. And one thing that Jeff Sullivan and I always marveled at with Lester is that didn't really seem to impair Lester's performance all that much that he just could not throw over to first base. Runners just didn't seem to really exploit that and take advantage of that. And we talked about some of the reasons for that, but it just didn't seem to have the impact

that people thought it would. And I think you can see the same sort of thing here. If you look at these leaderboards, which are very interesting at Baseball Savant, and I'll link to them, but the differences are not that great, really. Like they have team level and player level leaderboards. And certainly at the player level, like the guys you think are bad at holding runners, your Noah Sindergards and Adam Adovinos, yeah, they are indeed bad and they allow long leads and everything. But on a team level, like there's one stat, pitcher stealing runs, and it ranges from six to negative six. And this is runs, not wins. So that's basically like one wins worth of value, basically, separating the good teams from the bad teams, which I guess kind of reinforces the idea that in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter that much. It's something that you can be bad at and it won't hurt you if you're otherwise good. Like it'll hurt you, but it won't change the calculus that much.

Which is why some guys really do kind of just ignore the running game. And they just concentrate on the hitter and they do their thing and it works out okay for them. Like, Syndergaard has been really good at times, you know, when he still had his stuff. And Adam Adovino has been a great reliever at times. And they're just like, yeah, I'm not going to worry about that. You know, either I'm not good at that or I just want to focus my mental energy on the hitter and I'll just let this slide basically. And it might matter on the margins, but it's not going to drum me out of the sport or anything. And that seems to be the case with these stats,

if anything, like as cool as they are and as interesting as they are, just kind of reinforced to me that the running game, especially, I guess, in this era when teams maybe don't take advantage and they're not as aggressive on the bases as they used to be, you can kind of get away with just neglecting that aspect of your game as a pitcher. Yeah. Whenever I see stuff like this, my first thought is always like, how long have team side folks been able to quantify this exact thing? Yeah, I'm sure.

You know what I mean? Like, because it is such a pronounced shift that my assumption has been, yeah, there are stats around this that they're just saying, like, it doesn't matter, leave it alone. Like, just focus on trying to get your routes, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I don't say to discount the stat cast stuff, because I'm happy to have any new metrics and quantify whatever. Totally, yeah. I don't say it as a knock against the metric at all. I think that, you know, this is the era we're in, right, where it's like this stuff is largely going to be about what folks with greater and deeper access to StatCast have been able to kind of quantify themselves for a while.

So, right. Yeah. Sometimes you finally put a number on something and it's bigger than you think. And we all, we know over it and sometimes it's just like, yeah, like framing. That's yeah. That's the go-to example. Not many of the examples are as interesting and mind-blowing as framing was. It's kind of an outlier, but still. Most things aren't actions that happen as often as it does, right? This is always the... Yeah. Right. And also wanted to shout out some research done by Daniel Epstein at Baseball Prospectus, who did sort of a statblasty. This will be a good segue into the stat blast because he did sort of a stat blasty look at whether teams are due for a championship and

the different ways you can quantify that and how overdue some teams are and how much more some teams have won than they quote unquote should have. And the interesting thing is that he broke it down a few different ways. And I wonder which conforms most to the way that you think about which teams are overdue. So he had a democracy, a meritocracy, and an aristocracy. And so these three different ways that the democracy is basically just like, you've been around a certain number of years. And, you know, in this democracy where everyone gets one vote, then, you know, you could every team should win once every 30 years, that kind of thing. Right. And so just looking at it that way, then the Rangers should have 2.4 championships. And now they have won. So they're still overdue because they've been around since 1961. They've only won one championship. They should have won more than that. But as he points out, it's not a direct democracy. We choose our

representatives and then they do stuff for us, hopefully. And so baseball is sort of similar in that you have to get to the postseason to be in the running for the championship ultimately. If you just go by, okay, if you're in the playoffs, then everyone has an equal shot once you're in the playoff field. Then actually the Rangers deserve or are due exactly one world championship because they haven't been in the playoffs all that many times and haven't advanced deep into them all that many times. And so if you just add up the championship shares that they have, then really they were kind of only due for one. So now they've got it and that's all they earned. So yeah, don't complain, Rangers fans. That's one way to look at it. Then there's the meritocracy, which is looking at winning percentages, basically. And so how many championships would be expected based on your winning percentage over the years? And if you look that way, then he says the most overdue teams, it's not actually the Rangers, it's the Guardians. where they've been excellent. Obviously, they've been in the World Series not too long ago. They had those 90s teams that were great and didn't break through with a title. So the Guardians are negative 2.1 championships above expected. They should have won a couple, and they haven't

won any over that span. This is just like going back to the expansion era, and he breaks it down over various periods and everything. And then if you look at the most oversatiated teams, as he calls it, the Yankees have won 4.4 championships above expected even. So even accounting for the fact that the Yankees have won a lot in the regular season, they've still won more than expected in the playoffs. And actually the Marlins are right after them,

which kind of makes sense, right? Because they haven't had that many cracks in it, really. And yet they've won a couple. And so they should only have 0.4 championships, but they have 1.6 by that model, right? So that's one way. And then the final way, the aristocracy is looking at not just your average winning percentage, because, you know, if you just are 500 every year, you're never going to win. Right. But like looking at are you above a certain winning percentage, like 586, like a championship caliber roster? How many times have you done that? And going that way of looking at things, then the most overdue teams, still the Guardians, still with almost two, but then the Braves show up with almost two. Even though they won one not long ago, they should have won more because they've had so many good teams and so many playoff appearances and so many division winners. And then the most oversatiated, too many championships, still the Yankees, then the Cardinals, then the Marlins.

So yeah, you know how you think about those three teams grouped together all the time? Yeah, it's not a knock on the work. I understand what is meant there. It's just a funny on the work. I understand what is meant there. It's just a funny grouping of teams is all. Yes. And some of the ways that you break this down, like the Mariners, they actually, they don't really seem overdue at all. You know, they just, they haven't had enough cracks at it. And some of them, they do seem overdue.

So which of these is closest to your gut sense of when you think like, oh, that team, they've had hard luck, like they should have won more. Is it just how many years they've been around basically and how many they've actually won? Or is it like how many times they've been in the playoffs? Or is it how many good teams or how many great teams they've had? Like, do you factor that in when you think of how due a team is? Or do you just think purely like, well, you're supposed to win one every 30 years and they've won X in X years? I think I do think about like franchise longevity.

I think that that factors pretty heavily for me. I also, you know, it's like the way that the chances thing sort of interacts for me is strange, and it is definitely informed by my perspective as, you know, having been a Mariners fan for most of my life. winning one makes you feel more overdue than a team that hasn't really been in the postseason very often. But that starts to break down with rarity, where it's like, surely you're due for something good, right? And maybe that's confusing sort of general postseason competitiveness with being overdue for a World Series. I'm open to that feedback, Ben. But it does feel like it kind of plays together, you know, that way for me a bit. So, yeah. Like, the Guardians sure do feel overdue.

They feel overdue. They feel overdue. And it's, you know, of the teams, it's like them and, you know, the teams that haven't won one at all. Although not the Rockies, you know. hierarchy they are lower down just because of how new they are as a franchise you know i think that those things interact in a pretty important way where it's like in much the same way that the marlins being in that group of like over you know teams that are sort of oversubscribed championships just based on longevity is it's funny but it's true it's like they just haven't been around for very long and with the rockies you're Like, especially when your mascot is the thing that exists on like a geological timescale. You know, you're doing fine. Hockey's are a good example. They've only made the playoffs five times, right? And they've never won a division.

They've won a pennant. They haven't had great teams for the most part. And so from a fan's perspective, you could say, well, we've been around since 1993. We should have won one by now. It's less overdue if you look at, well, how many realistic chances have they had to win one? But a fan could say, well, we're overdue to have realistic chances. It's not our fault that they haven't put great teams together. That just makes us more due. We should have gotten more great teams by this point because it's not the fan's fault

if ownership isn't great or the front office isn't great and doesn't put a championship caliber team out there. So it's multiple ways to look at it, which is, I guess, why he looked at it multiple ways. But I guess I think of it more in terms of just how long has it been and how many of you won, which is the most simplistic, what Dan would call the democratic model. But then, yeah, once you do get more and more shots at it, like more lottery tickets, then if you don't get the winning ball in the drawing, then you feel cheated. Even though other fan bases are more cheated in a way because they just haven't even had any balls in the lottery drawing thingamajig.

Or a chance to even put one in the thing. There's that part of it, Ben. There's the you go there and you lose. That's one thing. You were there. I don't know what that looks like.

I don't even know what it looks like. Mariners definitely overdue to at least be in one. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. And the brewers show up high in these lists as one would expect as well.

Which makes sense. Yeah. Okay. All right. Finishing with a stat blast here. And it's fortuitous that we're doing the Stop Blast now because you still have a chance to avail yourselves of some Tops Now offerings that are about to go away. So Stop Blast sponsored by Tops Now. sponsored by Tops Now. And during the season, you get a fresh crop of Tops Now cards every day responding to the events of baseball games from the prior day. But now the season is over. We're not getting MLB action every day. However, you still can get, as we speak, three sets of cards

via Tops Now until November 15th at 4 p.m. That is very soon. Yeah. You can get a 10-card set of Players' Choice Awards winners until November 17th. You can get a 10-card, a dual-card set of Silver Slugger winners. So I guess we don't yet have the Tops Now, whatever we're calling the Gold Glo glove and silver slugger winners, the alloy athletes, whatever we've settled on there. Still, until the end of this month or December 1st, you can get that set of 15 Texas Rangers cards to celebrate their world championship.

So check out those options while they're still available at Topps.com or check the link on the show page to be taken directly to it. All right. Stop last here. One comes from Kellen, Patreon supporter, who says, I'm not sure if anyone has noticed this, but it seems to me that the base running this postseason was extremely conservative. In particular, it feels like there were very few base runners who went from first to third on a single. Obviously, every out is precious in the postseason, so it makes sense that teams might not be as aggressive, but it feels more conservative than prior postseasons. Does this seem right to you? Not sure how easy that would be to research. For me, it was extremely easy because I emailed Rob Means of Baseball Perspectives, who looks at this sort of thing regularly, and he does these monthly breakdowns of base running and many other trends. And he just published his results for October at BP. And he ran the numbers for me even prior to publication. And he found that going first to third on singles happened 29%

of the time during the regular season, 25% of the time on 93 postseason singles this year. Going second to home on singles, that happened 58% of the time during the regular season, 61% of the time on 41 postseason singles this year. And going first to home on doubles happened 38% of the time during the regular season, 40% of the time on 30 postseason doubles. So on the most common and salient way to gauge this, Kellen is right. Players were actually a little less aggressive going first to third on singles this postseason than they were during the regular season, 25% to 29%. To answer the inevitable follow-up, is that consistent with typical playoff performance? The answer is no. From 2017 through 2023, excluding 2020, base runners were slightly more likely to take an extra base in October than in the preceding six months.

So, so much for small ball and base running, I guess. Teams were more station to station than usual, at least going first to third this October. I wonder if we would have noticed if we hadn't had the expectation that like the D-backs were just going to run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run. You know what I mean? Because like we came in, I drafted their base running in our draft with this idea that it was just like they're going to run, run, run, run, run. Even with McCarthy out, you know, I was like, and then they were like, no. Yeah, not so much. Yeah. So that's one answer. I also my eye was caught by one item in Rob's piece, which was based on data from Katie

Sharp of Baseball Reference. This was about the postseason winning percentages of teams that scored first. So this year, we talked about how this postseason, it seemed like not a lot of lead changes, not a lot of comebacks. It was like teams that took the lead typically held those leads. And indeed, teams that scored first in a postseason game this year went 32-9.

That is a 780 winning percentage. And that is the highest percentage of any year in Robin Katie's data, which went back to 1998, the beginning of the 30 team era. So that was an outlier and it seemed like it and that stood up. But what's really interesting is that this seems to have become a trend in the postseason that it's become more common for the team that takes the first lead to keep it over this span. So if we look, for example, from 1998 through 2011, the team that scored first, and I'm cutting it off at 2011 because 2012 is when we added even more wild cards, right? Got a little closer to our current playoff format.

So, 98 through 2011, the team that scored first in the postseason went 285 and 168. That's a 629 winning percentage. That's obviously good. You know, scoring first is a good thing all the time. You know, scoring first is a good thing all the time. However, if we look since 2012, teams that scored first went 324 and 133. That's a 709 winning percentage. And a 709 winning percentage, that's like a 114-15 win team over 162 regular season game. And that's in the postseason when you're playing good teams.

So we went from 629 to 709. That's a big difference. And I think that has a meaningful effect on just how suspenseful individual postseason games feel. And, you know, it's not the hugest samples because it's the postseason, but I still wonder whether this means something. And I guess what it could potentially mean is, A, it could be the changes in pitching usage that we've seen in recent postseasons. Now, you know, if you look since 2016, which is roughly when teams really started like pulling out all the stops with bullpen usage on a league-wide level and third time through the order and all that stuff in the playoffs. It's been 222-92. That's a 7.07 winning percentage, basically the same as the 2012-2023 period.

So it could be that. It could be just that teams are not leaving their starters out there to falter. And they're bringing in the bullpen monsters. And maybe that's making comebacks less likely. And Rob has written about comebacks maybe being a little less likely just in regular season games. But it could also, I guess, because it could be because you let more teams into the playoffs and the field gets diluted a little bit talent level wise and more wild cards and everything. And so potentially greater mismatches in true talent among those

teams. And so maybe when one team takes that early lead, it's more likely to just be the better team and maybe it's better by more than it used to be better, you know, if it was just back in the day when you just had a World Series and that was the entire postseason and you just had the best team in one league and the best team in another league. There wouldn't be great disparities usually between how good those teams are relative to today where you might have a hundred-something win team and an 80-win-something team, right? So it could be that too so some combination of all of the above it seems like it is getting harder to surmount an early deficit in a playoff game or getting easier to hold an early lead so i guess that's bad i guess if i were gonna say is that good or bad i guess i would say that's bad. Like if we're going to have unpredictability when it comes to the results of series and everything and lots of upsets, maybe it's good that you get more predictability within a given game or maybe that's also bad. Maybe you just want that those win expectancy swings and the back and

forth lead changes and everything but seems like we're going away from that lately i bet a lot of it has to do with whether or not it's your favorite team in the game because yeah and what side of the deficit they're on right because you know we just had a world series with two teams that had pretty bad bullpens and i think that every time especially as the postseason advanced and we saw just how shaky he was like every time chapman came out of the bullpen every rangers fan i follow on social media was like really having a hard time you know they were like eating their own hair kind of levels of stress. So as a neutral, it's like, yeah, give me chaos.

Chaos is fun. But as someone invested, I would be like, no, unless your team's on the losing end and then you're like, I'm back in the chaos game. We're so fickle, you know? Exactly. All right.

This question, also postseason related, comes from matt patreon supporter who says because i'm a cubs fan i fondly remember the 2016 series and less fondly remember aroldis chapman being wild on the mound and being a bad person he won another ring with the rangers the two times he's been traded mid-season he's been traded to the team that eventually won the world series i'm also pretty sure he's not going to be in a Rangers uniform next year. This is weird to me.

Is Aroldis Chapman an outlier in that he's won championships with multiple teams while spending the least amount of time on that team? Is this a question that makes sense? I think so. Yeah. And a good one, too. It is. It's a fun question. Yeah.

Because we often get questions about, like, rings and who qualifies for a ring. And you never know. That's like kind of a year by year, team by team thing about point, basically you get a ring, right? It hasn't always necessarily been that way. And we wouldn't know without doing a lot of research. And even then we might not know who got a ring on what team, right? But if we use the current prevailing model of just, you played for that team in the majors, you get a ring and you get a ring and you get a ring, right? Then we can break this down statistically, or at least Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, can. You can find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. So he says, I looked at this using the anyone who plays gets a ring method. So if you played on a team in a season, whether in the regular season or postseason, you count toward that championship.

in a season, whether in the regular season or postseason, you count toward that championship. He then did innings pitched per ring for pitchers and plate appearances per ring for hitters. When ranking players with multiple rings, Chapman is 26th on this list with two championships and 55 and two-thirds innings pitched in the regular seasons for those championship teams. and two-thirds innings pitched in the regular seasons for those championship teams. The record for pitchers is held by Johnny James. James had three innings pitched for the 1958 Yankees and one and a third innings pitched for the 1961 Yankees. Both of those teams won the World Series. No other team he pitched for won a ring,

so he averaged two innings pitched per ring. Did he get tuberculosis twice or something? What happened with him? It's great work if you can get it to get a ring with that workload. It reminds me of Clay Bellinger, Cody's dad, who is a former Effectively Wild guest, someone I enjoyed his career as a kid and had an autograph of his. And he had a very short career, but every team he played for was at least in the World Series. And so he has a whole

bunch of rings without a ton of playing time. So that's nice. Ryan continues, Ian Kennedy is now near the top of this list with one inning pitched for the 2009 Yankees and 16 and a third for the 2023 Rangers. I forgot Ian Kennedy was on the Rangers this year. So do Pedro Baez, 17 innings pitch for the 2020 Dodgers, which of course was a shortened season. Two and a third innings pitch for the 2022 Astros. And Carl Edwards Jr., 36 innings pitch for the 2022 Astros and Carl Edwards Jr., 36 innings pitch for the 2016 Cubs, those Cubs again,

and a third of an inning pitched for the 2021 Braves. So I wonder if he got a ring. I hope he did for that one out he contributed to that championship run. The all-time leader for hitters, Ryan says, the legend, another former Effectively Wild guest,

Terrence Gore, of course. Yeah, obviously. Four plate appearances, two wins. Incredible. Great ratio. Yeah. And, you know,

using plate appearances doesn't favor Gore. I guess it does favor him in this metric because he got into games where he didn't get a plate appearance, obviously. But, you know, using plate appearances is fair. So, yeah, 10 plate appearances, lots of designated runner, you know, running specialist types.

And then with the pitchers, yeah, Johnny James, Al Downing, two rings, 10 innings pitched, Ernie Neville, Jay Tesmer. I remember Jay Tesmer from my Yankees fan days, from the Clay Bellinger days. Why do I remember him is the bigger question. But three rings, 20 and two-thirds innings pitch. So three rings for him with a seven innings pitch per ring. That's quite a ratio because most of the top guys are only two rings. Ralph Houck had four rings with only 30 plate appearances in those seasons.

So that's a, that's a nice eight plate appearances per ring. Yeah. Lots of, you know, Yankees bench players, bit players from the years, the dynasty years.

You have to specify which dynasty you're talking about when you're talking about the Yankees, but you know, lots of guys. Oversubscribed. Oversubscribed to championships. Yeah, exactly. All right, good question.

And then final question comes from another listener, in this case, Joe, who says, the Immaculate Grid craze has me remembering players from my youth, mid-80s to 90s, that I hadn't thought of since then. When I do, then I go back and see what their careers looked like. My example isn't a great one, but Brewers prospect Pat Listach won Rookie of the Year in 92, even got MVP votes. He accrued 3.4 fangraphs were that year, played six seasons in total, and finished with a total of 1.5 fangraphs were. So fewer than he had in his rookie of the year season. So that's not the way you want your total to go.

You want it to go up after that season, not down. Not down. Down is bad. Up is good. So my question, Joe says, is who lost the most value over their career? I imagine someone like Pujols or Miggy who stuck around at a below average or even below replacement pace for a while after having a lot to lose, are at the top. But maybe they're more pet listaches of the world. So actually,

it's not really the Pujols and Miggys of the world. I mean, they're kind of in a class by themselves. I think what set them apart is that, yeah, they were so great. And then they stuck around for so long during a phase of their career when they were not so great. But they were not losing tons and tons of value. Like they had a lot of replacement level or slightly sub replacement level seasons. But cumulatively, it was not that much war lost. You know. I remember people were always tracking with Pujols because he was at like 100 baseball reference war and he would like dip above or below based on what kind of season he was having. Ultimately, I think he ended up above. Yeah, he's at 101.5, a comfortable buffer there. That Cardinals return, man, that really did wonders for him. It did in a lot of ways, yeah. His war is lower per fangraphs regardless. He's at a mere 88.8 fangraphs war.

But even so, it's not like he lost that much off the top. So Ryan ran these numbers for me too. And he ran them two ways, although the results are fairly similar. One way is just adding up all of your negative war seasons over the course of your career and just what's the total there and whatever sequence those negative war seasons came. So they could have been your first season and your last season. You throw them all together. The other way I asked him to look at was more of a Pujols inspired or Miggy inspired way, which is like, how much did you lose from your peak? So wherever you peaked after a season, how much did you lose after that point? And as I said, the results are not that dissimilar,

and it's the same name at the top of both lists. And it's a name I cherish, and a player I kind of miss, Ryan Domet. So we're using Fangraph's War here, which does include framing, and so you'd get a different answer with Best Bargain for Swarm, which I guess is very tough for Ryan Domet. Yeah. B-Ref might be a bit kinder to him. Yeah. But if you add up all of his negative war seasons, you get negative 11.3. Yeah. If you add up his positive war seasons, you only get 2.7, which is not a great, great ratio. Yeah. But that's, that's, yeah, that's not good. And then if you do the career peak method too, so how much did you lose from your peak? It's actually exactly the same for him, negative 11.3, because he started

with three positive war seasons, totaling 2.7 war, and then ended with seven consecutive negative war seasons. Which, was that because he predated Pitch FX and so framing was not counted for by his first few seasons? I don't know for sure, but that would be my guess. That is indeed why. So full Pitch FX came in in 2008. And they were like, uh-oh, we got a problem here. Not by coincidence that that is when he went into negative territory. So yeah, this is a function of framing specifically with Ryan Domet.

The next on the list, so if you just add up the negative war season, Doug Flynn, negative 10.3. Jose Guillen, negative 10.1. Alfredo Griffin, negative 8.3. Juan Castro, negative 8.3. Johnny LeMaster, negative 7.9. Jerry Morales, negative 7.9. Dan Meyer, negative 7.7. The Legend, Nafee Perez, negative 7.5. Ruben Sierra, negative 7.3. The ratios are different here. Ruben Sierra had 21.3 in positive war seasons, but he also had negative 7.3 in negative seasons. A lot of these other guys ended up in negative territory overall. Then you get Gerald Laird, Vic Harris, Bob Lewis,

Ricky Gutierrez, Chris Davis, Chris Gomez, George Wright. I'll put the full list online. If you do the other method, again, it's largely the same names. I guess because in most cases, your negative war seasons are going to be clustered toward the end of your career, presumably. So you'll probably have reached your peak and then you will fall from there. That'll be very typical. So yeah. Domet, Flynn,

Laird, Juan Castro, LeMaster, Wright, Pablo, Coy Hill, Rob Johnson, Sierra,

Jack Heidemann, Don Miller, Dan Meyer, et cetera, et cetera. Actually, Luis Pujols shows up above Albert Pujols. How about that?

Yeah. Different Pujols. So Albert Pujols, he actually shows up at only negative 1.6 from his peak. And then Miguel Cabrera, also, he's at negative 3.1 from his peak. And if we go the other method, just adding up the negative seasons, then Pujols is at negative 3.2 and McGee at negative 4.1. So yeah, neither near the top of the leaderboard, but we think of them because of the contrast between how good they were for most of their career and then how bad they were at the end.

Yeah. All right, one announcement for you to end the episode. Effectively Wild's Secret Santa is happening again. I know it's mid-November. Some people are touchy about talking about Christmas-related stuff before Thanksgiving. But with our Secret Santa exercise, it helps to have an early start. Listener Zach Wenkos has organized this for years and years. It's always a good time.

Our listeners and Facebook group members become Secret Santas for one another and send out baseball-related gifts with a recommended price tag of 25 bucks or so. I always participate in this. I've gotten some great gifts. Hopefully I've given some great gifts too. It's always fun to try to find something special for the person. So if you want to take part, there's a form that I will link to on the show page and in your podcast app. You put in your mailing info and then it automatically assigns you someone and you get assigned to someone. This year, I believe Zach has said it so that there are separate pools of domestic and international participants because sometimes shipping very long distance can be a hassle. The deadline is December 10th. So you have time, but if you want to take part, go sign up before

you forget. I will keep linking to it in each episode between now and the deadline. The really fun part for me, at least, is when people start posting their gifts in the Facebook group after they arrive. But you don't have to be a member of the Facebook group to participate, nor do you have to celebrate Christmas. You just have to like baseball and giving and getting gifts. Another way you can spread some holiday cheer

is by supporting the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free aside from our StatBlast sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks. Adam Webb, Josh Thibodeau, Daniel Faust, and Jack Morris. Probably not that Jack Morris. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only.

If you're looking for a way to follow off-season rumors and transactions, there are channels channels in the discord group for that it's actually become one of my go-to news sources plus you get monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams discounts on merch and ad free fangraphs memberships potentially an appearance on the podcast so much more patreon.com slash effectively wild if you are a patreon supporter you can message us through the patreon site but even if you aren't you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can join our aforementioned Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Discussing baseball news pedantically And the colonies said erratically Staff was past class and better for free Thank you.