Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2116: Too Close to Hall

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on the contract over/unders draft and the “death ball,” banter about the signings of Rhys Hoskins and Matt Moore, weigh their current confidence levels in the A’s actually moving to Las Vegas, and consider a suggestion for a “pulling the goalie”-style tweak to baseball. Then (35:44) they talk […]

No ads, subscribers will support us. Vroom, vroom, fast on your slog to rigor mortis. Hello and welcome to episode 2116 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangrafts and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing just well. How are you? I feel like I have like a good natural cadence to like 2116. Like I've got it. I was struggling with it. Yeah. 21 da da da.

Yeah, you've adjusted to this new millennium we've reached here. It really rolled off the tongue. Yeah, 2116. We are going to be talking some Hall of Fame today, which we haven't done in a while since we had Jay Jaffe on. We're going to be talking to a first-time guest. In fact, a first-time guest on any podcast. Yeah. I always like to pop someone's podcast cherry.

Terrible. I like to be the first for anyone. Upsetting. I should not have put it that way, but that is what came to my mind, and that is what I said. Terrible. So, we are going to be talking to Jason Sardell, who is a projectionist. He is the leading projectionist for the Hall of Fame. And I guess you might say, well, why talk to someone about Hall of Fame projections after the results are announced?

But I think in some ways it's actually more interesting to talk to him now that we know that his model worked fairly well again. know that his model worked fairly well again and also talk about why it works and how it works and where he missed. And we'll go over the ballot and talk about some of the surprises there and some of the future ballots and also some of his non-baseball interests and hobbies and professional lives. So fun conversation, I think, and a good kind of bookend to Hall of Fame season. We talked to Jay Jaffe to kick things off and get a ballot preview. And now that the dust has settled, we'll talk to Jason about how it all went down. I don't think the horse is out of the barn here at all. I think this is a good time to talk to someone about Hall of Fame projections. all, I think this is a good time to talk to someone about Hall of Fame projections.

Maybe I'm protesting too much, but I think this makes perfect sense. I think a lot of people probably would have just rolled with it if you hadn't said anything. And now I feel like you've made it weird. Can I tell you something funny? So yesterday I had to run here and there and do some errands. And I stopped in at one of the breweries in town to, like, have an early dinner and a beer. And I looked over my shoulder, and there was Jay Jaffe's face on TV because they play MLB Network in Fate Brewing. Yeah. And I was like, I know that guy. And then I had to text Jay about it.

And I was like, this is still cool. You know, it's like still cool. Jay and I have worked together for a while now and I've been in the biz, but it's still nice to see your friends up on TV. So there we go. It is. And Jason Sardell was on MLB Network as well.

He was indeed. They beat us to him. Yeah. Yep. Though I messaged him before I even saw that that was happening. Wow. It's not a copycat booking,

but they beat us to it. It's like very defensive in the intro here. I don't know why no one was questioning this idea. Is it because I made fun of the cherry popping analogy? No, that was totally justified. Remember when there was a whole band called the Cherry Poppin' Daddies? The 90s were so weird. Yeah. Anyway, Jason Sardell correctly projected that Adrian Beltre, Joe Maurer, and Todd Helton would make the Hall of Fame and that no one else would. And that was, in fact, what happened.

gritty of that. That will be fun. A few other things before we get to that. First of all, I have an update to the update to the free agent contracts over under draft. No new signings have been made that have changed the results, but it turns out that there was a data entry error on the Effectively Wild wiki, which usually is above reproach and 100% accurate. But in this case, there was one small lapse and it does actually affect things. So you know how we talked last time about the Aroldis Chapman signing and also the Robert Stevenson signing. And I noted that I had taken the under on, I thought, MLB Trade Rumor's projection of 22 million, which is what the wiki said. And I expressed some surprise on the podcast that I had taken the under on that number because that sounded like a fairly low number that I wouldn't have taken the under on. But I accepted it because whatever it says on the wiki, I take to be truth and gospel.

However, in this particular case, it was not quite right. In fact, MLB Trade Rumor's prediction for Stevenson's contract was $36 million. And I took the under on that and indeed he got 33. So I was just barely right on that. And that changes things to the point where I'm now not trailing you. I am ahead by 10 million, which is still a small number. But I said someone had dubbed you Miracle Meg because of the come from behind trajectory that you had. You've not completely come from behind. It was a little too miraculous in that it was not actually supported by what was out there in the natural world, in fact. But you're still close and you're still very much within striking distance.

Just a slight correction to the record. So, okay. So here's the thing, Ben. I accept your correction to the record because that's, you know, that's correct. That's the right um bit of accounting and we want accuracy in um our our wiki and also our contests but i'm here to say the following i think i'm still miracle meg because the fact that it is remotely close remotely close after the titanic myth that was otani and might might I add, the titanic amount of graciousness in accepting the will of the people.

Still miraculous. Even if I lose, the fact that it is a contest is galling. It's flummoxing. It's miraculous. So, I will not take issue with the results of the decision to count the entirety of Otani's deal. And I will certainly not take issue with you having your contracts properly accounted. But I will quibble as an editor with your edit to the Miracle Meg distinction because plenty miraculous, my friend. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'm still sort of pulling for you here, even though...

You don't have to. You can pull for yourself. Look, we prioritize accuracy. And once this was brought to my attention, I don't know if I should even disclose the source who brought this to our attention. I hope I'm not ratting him out here. But this was reported by podcast listener, Fangraph's own Leo Morgenstern. Oh, yeah. He was listening and hearing this and expressed some hope that you, his editor, would not be mad at you, mad at him for putting you back behind me here. Certainly not. No, I don't think there will be any reprisals whatsoever.

And in fact, I'm sure you value his honesty and his accuracy. And attention to detail. Yeah, for sure. Yes, which you value in your writer's work. Yes. And bringing that same spirit to his work for Fangraphs. That's what he's about here. Well, not to mention that, you know, Leo, I am given to understand, does some work for trade rumors. Well, he would know. Yeah, it makes good sense that he would be invested in his other outlet being fairly and accurately represented on his other outlet.

That is correct. I would never hold that against Leo. Leo does good work. In fact, we aren't going to talk about his piece, but he wrote a piece today at Fangraphs that I quite enjoyed about sort of the most average pitches in baseball, the most normal pitches in baseball. And I thought it was quite good. And I know he did a lot of work on it. And so we're going to plug that piece right here. Yeah, I will link to that. I read this morning down on the farm, the newsletter did a piece on the least average pitches or pitchers, which is kind of a coincidence. I read that and then I saw Leo's piece. Oh, this makes a perfect pairing.

The most average and the least average. This is great. Yeah. So there have been a couple of signings that do not impact our free agent contracts over under draft, but do impact Major League Baseball, which more people care about. One of which was Reese Hoskins signing with the Brewers. Good old Reese is now employed again. Who doesn't like a Reese Hoskins on their team? That's a two-year, $34 million deal. Matt Moore has returned to the Angels on a one-year $9 million deal. Fascinating. So, Reese Hoskins, any thoughts on the Brewers adding a first base bat, which, you know, they've been in some need of in recent seasons?

Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like this is a really terrific fit. I was actually kind of surprised that they were willing to um guarantee that much i almost wonder he has an opt-out after the first year i almost wonder if you know they are a budget conscious organization if they're like you know you have to know that'd be fine but um really the brewers have been trying to sign reese hoskins for years now. Not the literal, actual Reese Hoskins, but like, they have been trying to, I think, secure a bat of his quality at that position for a while and sort of cycled through other options that have been, you know, fine, but not like spectacular. And so, I think it's a very good fit of player and team. And he has like a Midwestern way about him. Like, I feel like he will fit into the vibe of the Brewers very easily. So I really like that. I think that's a good pickup. They certainly need not only offense at that position, but just in general.

just in general. And so provided that he comes back fully himself from last year, I think that he's a really good answer to their roster needs. And for Reese's sake, I hope that he has just a really incredible season and has an easy opt-out decision just because he always feel bad for a guy who gets hurt the way he did in a walk year and so close to opening day like that was such a late injury for him so um i know he was uh quite beloved by many philly fans um and i'm sure they're sad to see him go but i think this is this is quite good i like it yep a So, yeah. 13.5% career walk rate. It's always a walk year for Reese Hoskins. Hi. Hey. I don't know, man.

You're on one. You're on a something. I don't know what the one is. I don't know what kind of one, but on one. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's encouraging for the Brewers because of some of their earlier offseason moves or non-moves after the departure of Craig Council. It then looked like, man, are they going to do anything here?

Are they just going to be subtracting? They traded Mark Canna away, who had played a little bit of first base for them, though mostly outfield corners. And then there was the Woodruff non-tender, which, you know, I understood. But, of course, there were the rumors about Corbin Burns. It seems like he is going to stay put. They hadn't made a lot of additions and

they'd made some subtractions. And so that was somewhat worrisome, right? Like, were they going to do anything? And they did this. So that is indeed something. So that's good. Yeah. Do you want to talk about Matt Moore briefly? Yeah, I suppose. Matt Moore, death ball practitioner. Matt Moore throws a death ball. I don't know that he calls it that, but he fit the description according to Brian Menendez. We got some feedback to the death ball discussion. I heard from people who liked it. I heard from people who agreed with me that it's not descriptive enough either of the pitches behavior or how one holds or throws the pitch. Most pitch types, it's either one or the other, if not both. tweak that and we could call it maybe like dead man's curve which is uh that was a Brandon Connor suggestion you know like a a twisty possibly lethal road like the 60s Jen and Dean song dead

man's curve oh I I was thinking about a pirate I made me think of a pirate well whatever works but that I think is more descriptive. It has curve in the name. It lets you know it's a curveball. On the other hand, it's a little more wordy. And it might be hard to abbreviate that in the various places that we abbreviate pitch type names. former, effectively, guest and pitcher now in the Astro system who works at Tread and wanted to make clear that this was not really something that they put a lot of thought into branding. That was kind of a happy accident if it does turn out to be good branding. And then, you know, I heard some feedback.

Someone with a team messaged me to say, like, what are we doing here with this death ball? It's a short overhand breaking ball. Why does it need a name? You know, which we touched on, right? Where do you draw the line or what's the threshold for this needs to have a separate breakout? And I think some people are perhaps of the opinion that this is unnecessary to separate things out into the death ball. But I think it's an interesting discussion. Did they agree with me about sweeper creep? They did not mention the sweeper creep, but I know there are certainly some people who share your feelings on that.

And some of them are just sliders, Ben. Some of them are just sliders. It's true. Well, Matt Moore throws one, technically, I suppose. So, he's back with the Angels now, who had him last year and then cast him loose in their late season wafer exodus. And now they've brought him back. And, man, the Angels, they just cannot buy a bullpen. They've tried. They've tried to buy various aspects of a team, and it hasn't tended to work out that well for them.

But the bullpen has been high on the list of things that have held them back during the Trout-Tani era. Like last year, they had the 27th best bullpen by Fangraphs War. The season before that, they were 26th. So they've squandered whatever leads that they've had. You know, they've gone and gotten guys. Sometimes they've kind of given guys away like Rizal Iglesias. Or like literally Matt Moore. Or like Matt Moore late in the season once all hope was lost. Yeah. But really, I just I don't know that. I mean, now, obviously, they have bigger problems than a bullpen. But even that, they have kind of rem then Adam Simber, Luis Garcia, Adam Kolarik in the mix, right? So not all name brand guys, but they're yet again making an effort to address a deficiency.

But the deficiencies go deeper with them now than they have in a while. They do. deeper with them now than they have in a while. They do. And I'm glad that you have remarked upon that so that I can instead remark upon the part of this signing that I find the most interesting, which is I do not know Matt Moore. We are not acquainted. We do not exchange holiday cards. But I feel like I have learned that Matt Moore is less stressed about potentially moving than I am. Like, I'm mostly interested in this reunion for the psychological strangeness that I see in it. Because if I don't think, you know, we talked a lot about the waiver stuff at the time. And I think that the place I came out was that, you know, I wouldn't want it to be a common practice, but I didn't find it to be like, it wasn't upsetting. I wasn't like as worked up about it as some people were.

And I was kind of okay with it from the perspective of the players involved, because the idea was sure to get the Angels below the first CBT threshold. But it was also putting these guys potentially in a position to get picked up by contenders and then get to go do contending stuff and like how exciting is that we we love to contend you know and so uh and you know like matt moore ended up in a position where the team he got claimed by didn't go to the playoffs and so he got put on waivers again and then the marlins did go to the playoffs but he was on the roster too late to be on their postseason roster. And then they got washed out of the playoffs, as it were. But I still, it's like so much uncertainty and being unsettled. And I think that, you know, if you're a player signing with the Angels, it's like, yeah, they are trying some, what I guess, like they're trying to patch some holes even though to your

point they have so they have so many holes but i think you probably have to know that part of the roster they are building is one that will be enticing to other teams come july you know what that can look like in la's case and he was like like, yeah, I'll do that again. And I just find that I'm, I'm, I want to be clear. I'm not being critical. Like I, um, I don't know that it's a problem. I'm not positioning it as a problem, Ben, but it is just really interesting to me because as I have established on this podcast, like if you could bury me in the front yard of this house, I'd be game for that. Um i hate moving um and decorating you know and then you have to live in a place like in my opinion ideally you live in a place at least twice again as long as it took you to like fully decorate you know because otherwise like what

what's the point of even having put the art up at all right like you put holes in the walls and you have to patch them just a couple of months later like get out of here that's that's useless you know that's a terrible way to live. I still don't feel like I'm fully done decorating this house. I got to live here for, like, another, like, five years, four years. How long have I lived here? I don't even know. It's just interesting to me.

And it makes me want to talk to Matt more when the angels roll through Arizona, assuming that they do, except that I don't know him. And so, I feel weird asking him such a personal question. But maybe I'll work up the courage, you know? Yeah. Baseball players, they're used to being asked personal questions by people they don't know. It does kind of go with the territory. Yeah. But it's like, I wouldn't want it to feel like an accusation, you know? Because it's like, again, I don't think it's bad. I just think it's interesting and maybe only to me, but definitely to me, you know, it's interesting to me. So there

you go. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it's going back to familiar environments. So some part of him might be thinking, I don't know if he still has a place or if he was renting or, you know, at least he knows where and how to look. But then you're right, in the back of his mind, he has to be thinking like, they jettisoned me before, they may well jettison me again. So he has to be prepared for that. I do just enjoy that Matt Moore's still kicking around and still a productive pitcher. It didn't really work out exactly like it was supposed to for Matt Moore, But there he is now late in his career, presumably, although you never know, lefty reliever.

Maybe he has some seasons left in him. But this incarnation of Matt Moore, since he's been in the bullpen exclusively, just the last couple of years with various teams, like he's been pretty darn dominant. I mean, you know, 126 and two-thirds innings, all in relief, 113 games from 2022 to 2023, 2.20 ERA. That's a 191 ERA plus with a 3.29 FIP. But still, nice to see him hanging around. And I do kind of also get a kick out of him being

on the same team as Mike Trout, because I will always remember that he was ranked ahead of Mike Trout on multiple prospect lists back in 2012. BP's own had Matt Moore as the number one prospect in baseball, just ahead of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. I don't think BP was, I don't know if BP was the only one, but he was very high on all of them. And, you know, maybe that wasn't the right call. I don't think you would see that today because pitchers have typically fallen down prospect lists. There are fewer of them on top 100s and fewer toward the top of top 100s just because of all the injuries, because they're pitching fewer innings. It's hard to justify ranking them on par with position player prospects. So that's kind of a relic of an earlier era of prospect evaluation and pitcher usage for that matter. But here they are, Moore and Trout together more than a decade later as teammates still contributing in very different ways. Does not appear that the Angels come to Chase Field, but of course they do do their spring training here. So maybe I got to go to a spring training game and be like, hey, Matt Moore, we don't know each other,

but talk to me about how it feels to move. Yeah. And lastly, before we get to Jason, just wanted to say that if you were to graph my confidence level that the Oakland A's will at some point be the Las Vegas A's or just a Las Vegas based franchise. Isn't that a new low? It's not at a low, but if you were to graph it, like it would be a gradual increase over time. Okay.

But of late, it is definitely decreasing. The line is curving down, right? Yeah. Every day that goes by that this just clearly is not a done deal. Not a done deal. After the various points where we thought it was a done deal, where it was presented as a done deal, I think we always caveated appropriately and said, you know, it's not over till it's over. Like, I won't fully believe it until

opening day in Las Vegas, whatever year that is. But the longer this drags on and the more incompetent John Fisher seems and the less enthusiasm it seems there is for this relocation in Las Vegas, the more and more I doubt that this will actually come to pass. Like, I don't know what happens at this point, but if you haven't been following it, it's just kind of a comedy of errors, except it's a tragedy of errors, sort of. But if you just want to point and laugh at John Fisher being a fool, that certainly seems to be happening. Certainly a lot of Fisher fool fodder going on here because it's been months since they were supposed to release their renderings, their stadium plans. That hasn't happened. They just keep delaying. There are still significant questions about

the funding. And Fisher has said that it's going to be funded mostly with equity from him and his family, but they still want to raise capital. There's still some uncertainty and conflicting reports and rumors about the actual site of where this hypothetical ballpark is going to be. There's still lots of questions about where the A's would play in the interim. Will they continue to stay where they are? Will they be in Sacramento? Which minor league park can be their temporary home? And then when Fisher went and talked to this Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce preview, and there was sort of a viral video clip of the emcee trying to pump up the crowd and be like, so are we all excited for the Las Vegas A's? Let's give it up one more time for Mary Beth and John Fisher, please.

The Las Vegas A's. We like the sound of that, right, Vegas? Yeah? Yes? Are we alive back there, Las Vegas? How we feeling? Yeah? Yes? Are we alive back there? Las Vegas, how we feeling? I know that sometimes it's tough to tell because the speakers mic'd up, not the crowd. There was a smattering of polite applause, but it was very much a please clap sort of situation, right? So I just don't know which way this is going to go. But the book is far from closed, clearly, on this relocation actually coming to pass.

Well, yeah. I wonder what they thought was going to happen, you know. And I think we made this point at the time. It's a regional game, baseball, but we know what happened in Oakland. You know, there's like a very robust ledger of that you could fill a library with all the pieces that have been written about the ace situation there and even if you for whatever reason or you know like maybe maybe you don't care about the the potential for billionaires paying for their own stadiums. Right. Like maybe you're of the opinion that this the place was pretty crummy.

You know, he was pretty dismissive of them. He was pretty insensitive to fans of the Oakland A's, not only as fans, but as like citizens of that city, right? It was harder on him than it was on them, right? Right. You know, and so like what he claimed, you know, I know that Vegas is full of distractions and there's a lot to pull your eye away. But like they, you know, they read newspapers in Las Vegas, like they see Twitter. And so I don't think that this guy was entering that market with like a sterling reputation. And it's just not at all surprising to me that there would be real people who are in the position of potentially footing the bill for a ballpark there who would have reservations. I just like I what did you think was going to happen, John? Mm hmm. Yeah, I don't know.

And there's been reporting about donations that have been made to some local legislators there who may have changed their tune. I'm not saying a correlation equals causation in this case, but, you know, wheels get greased. This is often how local politics works, but there are still some serious hurdles here. And this saga is far from over. So just when you thought they were in, they pull them back out, I guess. So stay tuned if you thought we were done talking about the A's. I mean, it's gotta be tough for A's fans

because on the one hand, maybe they're at the stage where they're getting some schadenfreude out of this or enjoying the fact that this is not going smoothly from Fisher. But then again, maybe at this point they would want a clean break. Like, let's just, if it's over, it's over, you know, like let's not rekindle this. Let's have a clean break and unfollow each other on social media and not think about each other for a while and see other people, you know?

It's just, it's tough if you're, like, breaking up but then kind of getting back together again, or maybe it's not over, you know? Is there an open relationship happening here? Like, I don't know what the state is, but I would imagine that there must be some desire for closure, even if closure means that there's no team in Oakland anymore. I guess, you know, most A's fans probably as jaded and bitter and sick of this whole thing as they are. I guess probably the best outcome would still be Fisher is forced to sell the team and maybe they stay in Oakland. So I guess you could hold out some hope for that. But then again, does that just turn out to be false hope and you're just torturing yourself for even longer than you've already had to? It sucks. But yeah, if there's any part of you that can at least delight in the fact that things are going wrong for John

Fisher, that certainly seems to be happening. Yeah, I just, I don't want to enjoy it because it does impact a lot of people who aren't him, right? Like, you know, I feel bad for the fans. I feel bad for everyone who works for that team, both as a player and, you know, a staffer in some other capacity. Like, it's just a really unfortunate situation. So I don't want to revel in it. a really unfortunate situation so i don't i don't want to revel in it but there is something about like very obvious and easy to predict potential consequences actually happening that is grimly satisfying i guess and like you know watch the joke's going to be on us because they're still

going to find a way to like finagle their way into that city. But I think that maybe the most meaningful potential consequence of this would be the league and the other owners taking a really hard look at their process to facilitate relocation, because like, we thought that this was a bad idea. It seems like it's continuing to be a bad idea. And yet it was a unanimously endorsed bad idea by the other owners so yes you know i think that this merits a really hard look at that process and a and a you know maybe a reckoning with how that's going to be conducted going forward because this seems like it has the potential to be a mess not only for their future prospects in vegas but like there's a very real question about like where where are they going to play? You know, where are they going to play after this coming year? It's after this year,

right? Like they're only in the Coliseum for one more season, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So where are they, where are they going to, where are they going to go, Ben? Where are they going to go? They're, that's a big league team. You can't just, you know, I know that they've been seen like taking tours of like minor league ballparks and it's like, you can't put a big league team. You can't just, you know, I know that they've been seen like taking tours of like minor league ballparks and it's like, you can't put a big league team in one of those places. Like it's not, what, why are we doing? Yeah, I don't know. It's like the well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions tweet. So we'll see where that goes. I'm sure that there will be some more twists and turns along the way before this thing reaches whatever its destination may turn out to be. Last thing, meant to mention this while we were doing follow-ups on Deathball and Over Under Draft, Adam, Patreon supporter, wrote in to say, Related to the discussion of different numbers of players on the field and bringing the best bats up in key situations, I think that you should be able to skip a player's spot in the lineup to get to a better hitter. But the skipped player is removed from the game and the team now has one less fielder. Imagine the drama of taking the lead in the top of the ninth by skipping a few guys to

get to your best hitters. And now you bring in your closer with only five fielders behind him. I was sort of lamenting the fact that there's no close equivalent to pulling the goalie in baseball. This is kind of similar. So if you wanted to get a better hitter up, you could skip a worse hitter or some intervening hitters. But then you would have to sacrifice those fielders as well in the next half inning. What do you think of that move? I think that would be super fun. They'll never do it no but it would be great fun and i like that it's for a positive reason so like i have written in the past about how baseball

should have a penalty box basically and but this is like a a more productive spin on that notion because you're not removing a player for some indiscretion that he's committed but because you're trying to press an offensive advantage and i i i think that that would be great fun like the strategy around that would be really cool to see play out i i again don't think it would ever happen and i do as always worry in these moments about like the the balance the proper balance between the offensive and defensive sides of the ball as it were um but i think it would be a lot of fun i've been watching a lot of hockey then yeah hockey's great i think something changed with the uh the coyotes distribution deal uh

they're just on the cw i just they're just on tv all the time. I get them on my Hulu now. I don't have to monkey with it. I think this is Valley Fallout potentially. I don't know. But I just get to watch the Coyotes. And yeah, I think I maybe like them more than the Kraken. Sorry. Anyway, I've been watching a lot of hockey. I almost don't understand it. Yeah. I've said it before. I'll say it again. Playoff hockey specifically. I don't know that there's better sports than that. But yeah, I like this idea of Adams. I think his specific scenario here with skipping a few guys to get to your best hitters and then having five fielders behind your pitcher. I don't know that that would ever make sense.

fielders behind your pitcher. I don't know that that would ever make sense. I think now maybe if you're going from say your number nine hitter to your leadoff guy, you know, skip the number nine hitter and sacrifice a fielder. Maybe that could make sense. But if you're skipping multiple hitters, I don't think the difference between one hitter and another is going to be big enough to justify the defensive ding that you're going to get from removing a few fielders from the field. But I could see some edge cases and it would be rare, but it would be incredibly cool when it happened. And imagine if it worked and that guy got the big hit, got your go ahead hit and then the suspense of, okay, can we hold on to this lead now with a compromised defense? And then figuring out how to align your fielders. That would be a lot of fun, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be. Interesting idea, Adam. All right. Let's take a quick break, and we will be back with Jason Sardell to talk about Hall of Fame projections and Hall of Fame results. Cooperstown, New York. You ready? Yeah.

Answer it. Answer it! Hello. Hello, may I speak with Adrian Beltran, please? Yes, sir. This is him. Adrian, this is Jack O'Connell with the baseball. Calling you from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Your new second home, the baseball writers have elected you to the Hall of Fame.

Thank you so much. It's official. May I speak with Joe Maurer, please? This is. Hi, Joe. This is Jack O'Connell with the baseball writers Riders and elected to the Hall of Fame. Congratulations, my friend. Wow, Jack, that's unbelievable. I don't even know what to say. Thank you so much. What's up, y'all?

We were excited. Thank you. We were excited. Thank you. Bye-bye. Well, if you were waiting with bated breath for the Hall of Fame voting results on Tuesday evening, you may have been spoiled or at least gotten advance notice, a little bit of a sneak peek, if you were paying attention to our guest, Jason Sardell, and his excellent Hall of Fame projections. He has become the acknowledged leader in the field of Cooperstown projections, and he nailed it once again. At least he got the headliners right. Beltre, Maurer, Helton, three for three. They went three for three. You went three for three.

Jason, congrats on the success yet again, and welcome to Effectively Wild. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So it used to be that there were several people who would publish projections for the Hall of Fame, and it seems to me that you've basically put everyone else out of business. Yeah, it does seem that way. You just beat the field to such an extent that everyone just kind of conceded that you had been the best at this and dropped out. that everyone just kind of conceded that you had been the best at this and dropped out. So I guess it'd be like if Zips or Steamer or Pakoda just trounced the entire field to such an extent that everyone else just folded and said, okay, I guess we'll stick with those

projections now. So how do you feel about being the only game in town at this point? It's convenient. I mean, it's always nice not to, if I miss anyone, that I could say like, oh, anyone would have missed them. Right. Well, tell us how your probabilistic model works and feel free to get as deep in the weeds as you want. This is effectively wild. Yeah. So it actually, it's not a super straightforward question because the answer is it changes every year.

And it really depends on the particulars of the election and not only that, but who I'm projecting at the time. So when I started it, it's actually been nine years and I had to look, I couldn't believe it when I looked it up the other day. Mid-2010s, I first posted, joined Twitter to post them and to communicate with Ryan Thibodeau of the tracker team in 2016. So that was right around about the time when Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell were on the ballot. And just Craig Biggio had just gotten off. And after a few years of frustration of tracking the ballot results as they came in, starting with the Baseball Think Factory had a rudimentary version of the tracker before Ryan took it over, and just getting frustrated at seeing, hey, these people are above early on. And then they inevitably dropped, and then I would

get annoyed because the guys I thought were first ballot Hall of Famers once again missed. So I got tired of getting my hopes up and built a model to try to unskew the projections just for my own sake. It was something I wanted to do, but I never planned to release it to the public. And then just done a lark, posted it to Twitter that first year and essentially nailed it. And the way it works is that there's this idea that there's two things going on in the tracker that you have to adjust for when you want to know where people are going to finish. One is that people can be up really early in the ballots just because the voters who voted them the year before are the ones who've submitted their ballots, basically, that have

revealed their ballots. So the really important thing to look for is the flip rate. It's not the raw totals and how many voters' minds have been changed since the previous year. It seems relatively straightforward, but that was really the key innovation of my model versus the other models that were out there at the time, which were just straightforward modeling public to private drop-off from the year before. And the advantage of that, of course, is that you can do it as the season goes on. You don't need to model a public-private drop-off as of the reveal time, for example. You could do it with 100 ballots. You could do it with 200 ballots just by knowing what other ballots do you expect to come out there. late-revealing ballots are the people who just don't reveal at all. They're not like the voters who reveal early. And it makes sense. The voters who reveal early are on social media. A lot of them do it on Twitter. Many of them are active, at least, reporters. So they write articles and

publish them in the paper. So these are people who are actively covering the game now. As we move on and on, a good chunk of them are stats-friendly. They cite war. They cite J. Jaffe's jaws when they write their ballot columns. Whereas the voters who are not involved in the tracker, some of them are people who just have a... I mean, they're stats-friendly voters. They just don't want to reveal early

because they don't want to spoil the fun. you would think, right? Like there are a lot of candidates where it's sort of an old school versus new school thing, but then there are others where it's been a bit more confounding, which probably makes it a little harder for you to anticipate exactly what the differential will be there. Yeah. I mean, the nice thing is I have the voter pool from the year before, so I know how these voters have voted. And I can say that there are some voters who frequently vote for 10 candidates, even on a weak ballot like last year. And I know that they're in there. And I can take the voters who revealed so far, I call these people like large hall voters, and take the flip rate projections for the large hall voters that have revealed and then project those onto the ones that

I know are large hall voters remaining. And the difference is that, let's say large hall voters, this is just, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but let's say large hall voters are 40% of the early reveal ones, but only 20% of the late reveal ones. It's putting a weight on, it's basically a weighted to flip rate model at that point. To that end, as you're relying on past behavior among the electorate to help you gauge what not only those individual voters might do, but voters like them might do in the future, how has the shrinking of the electorate sort of impacted your model? In some ways, it's become easier, I think, just because, well, I don't know, actually,

because it's been more challenging the last two years. And I think that might be a groupthink thing. We're getting more of a bias that the people who are revealing earlier, they're all involved in the conversation online, or a lot of them are. And even writers who aren't are talking to writers who are, whereas the ones who might not be revealing, I mean, some of them are retired. Some of them are just, whether it's because they're old, they've retired by choice or retired by not choice

and had to take a job in a different field because the field is so terrible right now. So they might be disconnected from the game and they don't have those conversations. So they might not be aware of people, say, for example, pressing Scott Rowland's case last year. So I think there has been more of a, it's harder to tease apart the early voters from the late voters, or there's more of a dichotomy there, I guess is the best way to put it. Yeah. It's a strange exercise because you're projecting something where you have half the answer key,

essentially, right? Like if Ryan Thibodeau and his team didn't do any of the tracking that they do, or if no one announced their ballots before the results came out, then you'd have nothing to go on, I guess, beyond previous year's results. As it is, you have quite a bit of data

that you're basing things on. So it's almost like, you know, if Zips knew what some player seasons were going to be with certainty, but they didn't know for others. I mean, it's different from sort of a statistical projection of a player season, let's say. But on the other hand, the data that you have is skewed in some ways and may be misleading. It might be worse to have that than to have nothing if you weren't accounting for these differences between the public-private ballots. So it's a strange sort of exercise. It's different from the kinds of projections we typically talk about. Yeah, it's like, I mean, like you say, it's hard to be wildly wrong when you have half the ballots in. You shouldn't get anything too wrong. I mean, like you say, it's hard to be wildly wrong when you have half the ballots

in. You shouldn't get anything too wrong. But that's why I almost think it's silly that we focus on what the projections are an hour before the reveal. Who really cares at that point? I mean, that's just sort of an exercise in, I don't know, bragging or trying to get some credit there. I mean, I find it much more interesting to be able to project things sort of like the end of December, when you might have only 100 ballots in. You still have three weeks to go. They seem to keep pushing back the results day after every year. It used to be right after December, but now it's the third week of January. I think that's much more interesting to know at that point. It's like, okay, now we get a better

sense of where things are headed. I used to reveal earlier on, but I almost don't like that because then you get a reinforcing bias where my projections could then sway voters in influence. And I don't want to do that at all. I don't want someone to say, oh, well, Joe Maurer looks to be in good shape. I have 11 candidates I want to vote for, so maybe I'll leave Joe Maurer off my ballot. And then too many people do that,

and then he winds up falling off. That would be the absolute worst thing. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, because there is this concept in like, you know, political science literature about being a strategic voter. And I wonder if you, if you see, I know that there are people who when they're doing their ballot explainers will explicitly say, you know, I'm limited to 10 slots. And so I am shifting support from this guy who is a shoo-in or who I assume is going to be at least safe enough to make it to the next ballot, even if he's not going to

necessarily be inducted off of this ballot, so that I can support someone whose candidacy is on shakier ground. When you're looking at all of these, do you think we're good strategic voters in the BBWA? Because I always wonder how accurate people's sense really is of where a given candidate's candidacy sits. large hall voter and you wanted to save someone like David Wright. Jason Stark wrote a great column about how he doesn't necessarily believe David Wright's a Hall of Famer, but he doesn't know he's not. So he wants to make sure that he sticks around other years. And I think that that's a valuable way to look at it for voters. And I think most people choose the right people to leave off. There were a few people this year who voted for 10 and left off Todd Helton, at least one voter who did that. And I think with them, it was more of a straightforward,

I'm voting my top 10. I don't care whether or not they're close or not. And that vote could have in the end mattered. I mean, Billy Wagner lost some votes. And I think if everyone who dropped Billy Wagner had not dropped him, he would have made the Hall of Fame this year, which is really, really heartbreaking for him, I think. Yeah. And his fans, for sure. Some of those might have been poor strategies. Some of them were just people changing their minds. People realizing that, hey, I feel like someone convinced me last year, and now I don't agree. Some of them might not have even remembered they voted for him.

It's hard to speak for every voter. I think it makes sense. If I had 12 people who I wanted to vote for, I'd probably leave off Manny Ramirez and A-Rod. They're not going anywhere. It's kind of a wasted vote, so why do that? But luckily, it's not the case where everyone does that, because that would get a problem if everyone drops, say, Carlos Beltran to make room for everyone else, and then he wound up at 5%. Yeah. Just to give credit to some other people who still have their hat in the ring here, I know Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight, who's been on the show before, and he's tracked the projections historically. And there were some other people put numbers out there.

Adam Doerr did a naive flip rate model. He's one of Ryan Thibodeau's collaborators, which I guess doesn't project first timers. And he did fairly well, too. But yours, I guess guess is the only remaining full projection model right so we can give you that distinction at least but i will link to nathaniel's tweet so are you inherently a small hall or large hall guy and do you find now that you are still able to root for the players you think deserve to be in or don't deserve to be in or do you find now that you are still able to root for the players you think deserve to be in or don't deserve to be in? Or do you find yourself now rooting for your predictions to be correct as well?

So, no, I definitely have favorites and people I root for. And my stance on the hall in general has evolved. I think 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I was not necessarily small, small hall, but the ones you know when you saw them play and you didn't have to think about it. And it was easy at the time, I think, coming up with a hypothetical ballot in the mid-2010s, because you're limited to 10 votes, people like Scott Rowland weren't cracking my top 10. So I didn't really have to think about them at that point. And it was only once I started to have room on my ballot, I'm like, hey, Scott Rowland, he's a definite Hall of Famer in my mind, if you look at the statistical case. Or someone like

Larry Walker, he came on. I think I would have had him on my hypothetical ballot my first year, but then I dropped him and it would have been a while for me to put him on. But your question about who do I root for? I mean, last year I had projected Scott Rowland to finish just short, and then he made it. And I was like, I'm really happy Scott Rowland made it, but really annoyed that I got it wrong. Yeah, right. Like you had Billy Wagner at a median outcome of 74% with a 27% chance to get over 75%, he ended up at 73.8%. So you pretty much nailed it. But if he had gotten five more votes, then he would have been over the threshold he would have been in. And again, probabilistic model, I mean, it goes back to

the old Nate Silver conversations about the elections, right? Just because the most likely thing didn't happen doesn't necessarily mean that the projection was wrong. It is a probabilistic forecast, which accounts for some possibility that the less likely thing will occur, right? So it doesn't invalidate your model if Billy Wagner had actually gotten in. And maybe as a larger hall guy now, you'd be happy for Billy Wagner that he got in, but then also maybe a bit disappointed that you hadn't projected him to be over the threshold. Yeah, Billy Wagner, I mean, I was rooting for him. And it was close enough, like you said, he was well within the confidence interval to get in at 25% of my model simulations. confidence interval to get in at 25% of my model simulations.

I basically consider that almost a coin flip at that point. I mean, it's one of those where you just can't predict. It's like if a given hitter comes up to the plate, you would bet on them to get an out. But I mean, you wouldn't bet too much for them to make an out. I mean, it's the most likely outcome, but the alternative outcomes aren't that surprising. Actually, I was joking with some people, some of the tracker guys, that one of the best... It was perfect when Todd Helton and Billy Wagner

were both projecting at 75% around. I was like, well, I can't be wrong at this point. If I could just root for them to get in. But then Todd Helton, in the end, he really pulled ahead in the last couple days. He didn't need a lot of flips. The problem with him was that there just wasn't enough data points early on. So many people had voted for him the year before that he didn't have a lot of flip opportunities. And then some voters came in the last few days who had not voted for

in the year before, and then they had added him this year. So I was confident he was getting in at the end. Billy Wagner, like you said, I like to think of it as, are these candidates on pace to get elected? And it doesn't mean that they're, like Billy Wagner, I frame it as he's fallen behind and he needs to make up ground in the remaining voters. And unfortunately, he didn't do that. He basically – the post-reveal voters were the ones that – the ballots that we've yet to see, they basically followed the same similar patterns, at least under the assumptions of my model as the early reveal ones. Yeah. Have you tried your hand at long-term forecasts? I keep analogizing to Zips and something like that has 10-year forecast, 10-year Pocotas, right? Have you considered 10-year Sardels? I have not. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to stick with this. I have friends who are like, why don't you gamble on sports?

I was like, well, that's a very different thing. Like you said, I don't have half the data points for a sports game before the game starts. Yeah, you could project first-time candidates based on how similar they are to comparable candidates in the past. Or you could project the trajectories of returning candidates based on previous performance, right? It could get much more complex if you wanted to. Yeah. I mean, I still do. It's funny because I could model it. And some of it is just what my gut assumption is. And in the past, every time my gut assumption has been wrong, well, not every time, but most of the times where I'm like, oh, my model's way off on this guy, it turns out that I'm wrong. So I've learned to trust the numbers most of the time. But I did like I put in a, I guess that Joe Maurer would actually get in the Hall of Fame. Ryan ran a poll last year. I think there were two people and I was one of the only people who thought he would. I think, I guess I was hopelessly optimistic. Well, not hopelessly, rightly optimistic, but that was just based on gut. And I think maybe at that time, Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe had said he was going to vote for Joe Maurer. And once he did that, I was like, oh, he has a real chance. Vitoriously crotchety. He had submitted three Jeff Kent ballots.

Only Jeff Kent's in a row. So I was like, okay, if this guy's supporting Maui, I wasn't sure how much support he would have. But that was a good sign for me. And he said he's going to vote for CeCe Sabathia. Well, I was just about to ask about sort of this next crop of pitchers who are coming up. And I know that, you know, it's maybe not a particularly good comp to, you know, put someone like CeCe in conversation with some of the other starters that we've had lately. But, you know, the electorate's going to have to figure out what it thinks the standard is for modern starting pitchers because they obviously aren't throwing as many innings as guys used to. And so I wonder if there are any sort of trends in the starter data lately that make you either confident or skeptical that some of these guys are going to get in because it's

not like we're not going to elect anyone from this era, but we're going to have to do it with at least inning totals that sort of pale in comparison to some of the ones that we've seen in prior generations? It's a great question. I think Felix is a unique, he'll be a unique litmus test really for this because guys like Mark Burley, Andy Pettit, they're certainly going nowhere. They're stuck in the teens. Tim Hudson fell off. Of the three, he's probably the one I rank the highest. Johan Santana might have been a good comparison to Felix, but it was a totally different situation back then. The ballot was too crowded for him. He never really stood a chance. Yeah, it does feel like if Santana or even Kenny Lofton, someone like that,

came along now instead of then, Things might have been very different. Yeah, Santana is one of my personal. I think if I would put three pitchers who were not in the Hall of Fame, it would be Johan, probably David Cohn, and then Dave Steed. But I think Johan really, Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds, they just got really crushed by that ballot crunch. So it's hard. I don't think we can project those cases forward and use them to shine light on what's going to happen with these other guys. And I'm hoping Felix at least gets some support. If not him, I mean, you got CeCe, you got the big four, and then who else? I don't know. It's going to be Garrett Cole when he retires.

Yeah. Have conditions gotten more conducive to accurate results for you just based on how the ballot is overstuffed or not as overstuffed? Obviously, your technique has improved. You've learned each time that you've done this. And I suppose the percentage of ballots that are public has increased, which makes your job easier. But if the ballot is less stuffed with overqualified candidates, does that help you? Is it easier now because there's a little less of a backlog? Yeah, well, it's a very different model now, too. Because, for example, this year, generally, I create three categories of voters, large hall,

medium hall, and small hall. And in the past, large hall has just been these guys are more likely to add, these voters are more likely to add a player. Medium hall, you would think they're less likely, and small-haul, least likely. This year, the large-haul voter block were the ones who basically had voted for, they had eight or more holdovers from the previous year. So they were an interesting voter block to model, because if you looked at their, sort of ahead of my spreadsheet, red for drops and greens for ads there's a lot of reds in that that voter block um just because they only had one or two open spots and if they

wanted to add chase utley they had to drop someone they they voted for the year before if they wanted to flip on someone they they missed last year like add billy wagner they had to drop someone um and a lot of them i think probably left off left off Chase Utley. He got left off, I think, 26 full 10-player ballots this year. So he has a, going into next year, that's going to be a different case where we have a lot of open ballot spots, three inductees plus Sheffield dropping off. So no one is really going to be limited

by who they want to add. And players like Pedroia or Felix, who might be on the bubble, have a real opportunity to at least get some support there. And Chase Utley is really unique because of everyone else on the ballot, he and David Wright are the only ones who haven't been in one of these situations where most voters could vote for anyone they wanted. The year before that, when Rowling got in, was a relatively weak ballot. to sort of stick around.

Because I didn't know if Maurer would be a first ballot guy. I thought that he might linger. And to your point, it opens up a space next year. We just don't have to have a couple of years of him sitting around like 65% before he gets over the threshold. I think having Roland get in last year was really key because it opened up that spot for people to add Joe Maurer. And I think a lot of people would have just

potentially just left him off because they thought, oh, he'll be around for nine more years. I already have nine guys I want to vote for, and Adrian Beltre is the 10th spot. So I think that really helped him. And then getting three this year is going to help. I think the fact that each of us joining the ballot amongst more of these old school voters, who, I mean, some voters are just like, they put a hard cap of three votes or four votes on their ballot, regardless of what else they think. They might be less inclined to add someone this year.

But the year after that, Cole Hamels is the top player by war on the ballot. And there's no anything I don't think anyone would really consider a Hall of Famer beyond him. He'd have to be a pretty large Hall. I think there's a case for him, but I think a lot of people are going to overlook him. So I think that year and the year after that, Buster Posey's the only one who comes on. So I think people will be looking for players to vote for. I think that helped Scott Rowland last year. And you saw a lot of jumps among players like Andrew Jones, Billy Wagner, Todd Helton. They all really benefited from that week ballot in a lot of open spaces. from that weak ballot in a lot of open spaces. So I think in the next two years, we could potentially see that with Carlos Beltran, for example. Andrew Jones, again, he kind of plateaued this year. After some major gains for the previous two years, he only gained a few percent this year. So it'll be interesting to see if he can flip a bunch of voters next year, otherwise he's at risk of topping out.

And then he's going to have to rely on voter turnover, really, to put him over the top. I suspect strongly that Sabathia will get in. I have very little doubt that he will eventually. And it wouldn't actually surprise me if he got in on the first ballot. I just think, given all the focus on starter workloads these days, even the fact that he was pitching until very recently, he's remembered rightly as a durable guy with a lot of longevity and not just a innings eater or compiler, but someone who won a Cy Young, someone who has a Hall of Fame level war, someone who won a World Series. People remember what he did down the stretch in 2008. He's just well-liked, I think, as a person and as a leader generally. So I strongly suspect that he will do better than some of the pitchers who've been in kind of a

comparable range. That's my projection, I guess, for next year's ballot. I mentioned that you nailed the top line results in that I think when people look at your projections, the number one thing they want to know is who's going to get in and who's not going to get in. And on that score, you were perfect this year. Of course, you missed somewhat on everyone to some degree, right? And even the guys who got in, you know, Beltre had 95%, you had him closer to 99%. Maurer, you had 82.6. And of course, he barely squeaked over the line, 76.1. Helton, you had pretty close to his results, right? You had him at 77. He ended up at 79, close to 80. So what were your biggest misses, even though overall you did really well? And do they tend to come toward the top of the ballot or toward the bottom? I could see that going either way. I guess the more support someone has in theory, the more percentage points you could miss by, but then on a percentage basis, you could obviously miss by more with some of the candidates with, say, single digit support. You know, if you project 3% and they get 6% or something, that's a big difference in terms of percentage.

So how does that tend to shake out and who were your biggest misses this year? Yeah, so obviously it's a lot harder to project the new people to the ballot. You mentioned Adam Doris' flip rate model. I mean, that's an unadjusted flip rate model. Mine's sort of a categorical flip rate model. But you can't use those for first-time candidates, obviously. So you don't have that prior year to use as a prior going into the model. So they're a lot harder to predict. In the past, I've been able to. So, for example, when David Ortiz was on the ballot, I could use voters' attitudes towards A-Rod or Barry Bonds.

Well, actually, he came on with A-Rod, I think. But I could use Barry Bonds as a proxy to further categorize voters and how they evaluate PED usage. Last year, I did something similar for Carlos Beltran. I used, did the voters vote for A-Rod? And did they not? And that seemed to work well. I missed Beltran a bit this year. And to be honest, it was a bit of laziness and a bit of just not having

the time um i did it i i was worked on a ped version of the model just specifically for him but i just ran out of time to do it and i just a lot of times when i do start making more complicated models it changes it has minimal effect and i knew he wasn't going to get in um but i bet like yeah he that, yeah, there might be a different attitude, for example, in the second half of the voters in terms of how they're going to penalize him for the sign-stealing scandal. So I think as he gets closer to 75%, it's going to be more important to include that as a factor in the model. And the same with Gary Sheffield. I didn't model him as a PED. I didn't put PED perception in my model as well, and I

missed him by a bit. Your question, Ben, about the candidates who are really low-ranking, so the ones on the bubble, and really the ones like Matt Holliday the ones that get one or 2%, they actually do historically have done better in the private or post-reveal ballots. I think maybe because those voters have fewer players on their ballot, so they can feel free to throw a token vote to a candidate. Maybe because they're a bit more old school. maybe because they're not on social media, so they don't care about people criticizing them because they say voted for James Shields or something like that. Personally, I like those votes, as long as you're not taking away a vote from someone you thought was deserving. I think it's neat to honor those guys. But projecting those are a bit tricky. I tend to underestimate where they are. The ones on the high end of the ballot, I tend to maybe overestimate, although I'd say it's much

more the case with the first-time voters. So I'll be really interesting. The BBWAA will release a whole bunch of ballots in two weeks' time. The voters to have an option to check yes or no. And I think last year, about all but 60 or so voters either released through the tracker or checked that box. So that'll be really interesting to see. Joe Maurer obviously lost a huge amount of support. He had the biggest drop-off of anyone that was close to the Hall of Fame election threshold, and I think could track her history. Halladay dropped off similarly, but he did much worse. And I'm really curious to see.

I mean, Adrian Beltre only got 89% support with the remaining voters after going 216 for 218 in the early votes. So I'm really, really curious about that and who it is, whether or not they tend to collect in the voters who didn't check that yes reveal box or whether we do see some of those in the yes box. that many voters that are in. We know who the voters are and we could see, like, are they, who are they? Are they, so there's a large block of voters who are members of Elias, the statistical people, and they almost never reveal their ballots. That's 10 to 12 voters right there. And if they're voting as a block, well, that violates the statistical assumptions of my model, and I might have to incorporate that into the uncertainty projections that I model. Because if they're all talking to each other and they all decide, hey, let's not vote for Joe Maurer, I don't think he's a Hall of Famer, and they convince each other, then a model that assumes everyone is independent, or at least mostly independent, it's not going to work in that case. Yeah, I guess it's also a case where you might have rooting interests that are at cross-purposes because if everyone released their ballot and we had the complete data, and if they did it

especially early on and it was all in the tracker and we just had perfect information about everything, then I guess we would no longer need projections, really. And so I assume that you approve of transparency. And yet if we had total transparency, what would we need you for? Well, yeah, in my mind, I really wish, and I know that BBWA has been really good on this, is trying to push the hall for full transparency. And I don't, I like that. I think we've got the perfect mix now of about half the voters revealed beforehand, and it makes things interesting, but it leaves enough uncertainty to leave us on the edge of our seat come election day. Because I'm probably as nervous as anyone else, bar the candidates, because I have an emotional stake in what the outcomes are. They should send a camera crew to your house to film a live reaction.

Send the camera crew to your house to film your live reaction. Like, phew. But if I knew who those private voters were and how they voted, there's a lot more advanced statistical techniques that I could do. I could do like PCA sort of regression and really try to cluster these voters into better categories than just simply large, medium, small hall. And I can kind of extrapolate that based on we know how many people had 10-vote ballots from the previous year. We know how many ballots, how many votes were remaining. So I can guesstimate what that breakdown is there, but I don't know how many of those voters flip. There might be voters who never, well, we know there are voters who on record are saying

they almost never flip, unless they're truly exceptional circumstances. And then there are ones who are more prone to flip. And I'd like to include that in my model, but without having that information for those private voters, and they're pretty key, especially come reveal time, it's impossible to model them. And I think it's, I mean, as someone who loves data, I think it would be really nice, fun to dig into the full data of all the ballots. You know, I know that this year with Wagner so close,

he had said publicly that like he wasn't going to have anyone over because he didn't know and wasn't confident that he was going to get the call, which obviously he didn't end up getting. I'm curious if you've heard any feedback from candidates or people with the hall about sort of how they use this information to manage their own expectations, because I know it's exciting for all of us and I think having some suspense around it is good, but it has to be so painful for these guys who are close, you know, to not quite know and to have to brace for that day and decide whether they have a barbecue or not, you know?

Yeah, I saw that story by that interview with Billy Wagner. Yeah. The scenario he described, I mean, I think he said he was going to just be on the ball field doing practice. He's a college coach, I think. Yeah, I haven't heard from any candidates directly. I know some of them have followed the tracker in the past, or if they don't follow the tracker, their families are following the tracker and their friends are following the tracker and constantly. And I think that interview with Billy Wagner, he's certainly familiar with the numbers in the tracker. I mean, my nightmare is Joe Maurer

came really close to not getting in this year. I mean, I told people, I was like, if he doesn't get in, I just have to delete my account because I would feel so awful. I mean, I was giving him over 99% probability. And I guess the worst case scenario happened and he, well, not the worst case, but made a really, really, really stark difference between the private voters. And he did have enough of a buffer to make it. But if he was so confident because of my tracker, my projections, and then he didn't get the call and everyone was sitting around, yeah, I would not feel good about that at all. around. Yeah, I would not feel good about that at all. Yeah. I've seen some people say that Maurer's election bodes well for some of the other catchers who were coming onto the ballot. I don't know if I buy that. I don't know that Yadi, for instance, needs help. I think he will probably sail in. And I think Maurer's case is unique, just the kind of offensive force he was as a catcher. So I don't know if that makes things more likely for Russell Martin and Brian McCann, guys who would have framing-based war cases to get in. I don't know that Maurer really has any bearing on, you know, he was seen as much more of a star during his day than they were. So whatever war says, I don't really think it's transferable personally.

I'm not totally sold on those guys, those two as Hall of Famers. But I would love to see them at least get 5% next year and stay on the ballot. At least until we better get some perspective. Their framing metrics are amazing. I don't think that'll be the case, but we'll see. I mean, it's a fairly, there's a lot of space on the ballot, but I don't, I mean, in terms of first-time candidates, it's actually a pretty strong ballot next year.

You've got Ichiro, you've got Sisi, and I agree with you two that I think he'll get in or at least get very close. Dustin Pedroia has a good case. Felix Hernandez has a good case. I doubt they will get elected as a first ballot out of the famer, I think, but they'll probably get maybe even the 20%, maybe more, who knows. I think they'll at least get 5%. And that doesn't leave enough much room for the two catchers. And then Buster, I mean, Joe Maurer was a unique case. He has the war metrics and he had a short career,

but he did have the three batting titles and he did have the MVP award and traditional voters value things like that. So maybe it does help Buster Posey possibly, although he has his own separate case too, right? Certainly championship-based case. Each of those guys has something different going for them that I think will be enough to get them in. So I don't even know if they need kind of a piggyback effect to get in on the shoulders of Maurer, but can't hurt, I suppose.

Yeah, and I think there's new voters coming into the voter pool all the time and presumably younger, many of them. And they grew up with the advanced stats. So I think the playing field will become more favorable to people who are stats-friendly candidates. Yeah. Although some of them chicken out like Ben and don't cast their ballots. Yes. Yeah. I mean, don't begrudge Ben.

I mean, it's easy to have a hypothetical ballot, but then when you actually have to vote and you have to consider things like off-the-field issues, it just becomes a nightmare, I think. If I had voted, I don't think I would have voted for Billy Wagner, so don't be mad at me. Sorry, Billy. I'm just not really a reliever in the hall guy. Yeah. I mean, it does hurt someone like Billy Wagner.

I mean, it's an argument that a reliever is not as good as someone like Mark Burley. I mean, I would have voted for Billy Wagner, but I respect the opinions of someone who does that. So it could be a double-edged sword, depending on the candidate. Or someone like Jimmy Rollins. If you look at his advanced stats, they're maybe not super great. At the same time, mentioning that there hasn't been

a middle infielder elected that has played since 2007 other than Derek Jeter. So, I mean, who else are we going to put in for shortstop until the current crop retires? I mean, Tulewitzki, he had a great peak, but he probably didn't have a long enough career. So I haven't had Jimmy Rollins on my hypothetical ballot, but I mean, I'm open to considering him on a, even if the stats,

the pure advanced stats case for him isn't super great. Yeah. We've seen enough guys make moves after a few years on the ballot, despite having a fairly low starting point that it's hard to write anyone off. You know, like Bobby Abreu, for instance, he's at like 15% after five turns on the ballot. I don't foresee him making some massive move, but we've seen people like that. Suddenly they become kind of the it candidate, the 5% minimum your first time on the ballot, but maybe that doubles. It goes up to 10% your second time on. He was sort of proposing that concept and saying we could tweak the particulars. And I might be amenable to something like that. But as he said, there are enough examples now of people who've made major steep assents that

you wouldn't want to preclude that possibility for anyone whose candidacy might catch on late. I love the idea of you being like ready to tweak the rules and then still be like, but I'm not going to vote. Yeah, I'll just offer my input from afar, from the sidelines. I do think a lot of those big gains might have been a holdover from the ballot crunch. Yeah. The really full ballots and bonds and inclemens being stuck on the ballot like people like larry walker scoverland i said

it's like my hypothetical ballot it's like i just didn't have room to vote for them um and i think a lot of when i was able to put them on my hypothetical ballot that's when they made their big jump so it's clearly a lot of other voters were thinking the same thing and then once they get that momentum that causes the the small hall voters to give them more consideration and take a look at their case. And I don't know if anyone... Chase Utley, I cited, I think because he may very well have been left off many ballots by voters who would vote for him. So I think he could make a jump next year. Not up to into 60s or anything, but enough to then start to get some momentum going. I mean, he's one of my favorite players of all time. So I'm very invested in his candidacy, but I think it's going to take

him a while. But even like, I mean, he's got nine more years and there are a good number of voters who don't vote for him this year who won't be voting 10 years from now, 10 years from now. They've retired, they've lost their badge. And then some people just stop voting once they retire, even though they're eligible. So it's going to be very different for him even five years from now than it might be today. Have you thought about naming your projection system? So it's going to be very different for him even five years from now than it might be today. Have you thought about naming your projection system? Because every projection system has got to have some sort of acronym or backronym or convoluted, tortured, you know, named after Cooperstown and each letter stands for something, right? Have you thought of something like that?

I have not done that. No, I actually haven't. No, just because it was, yeah. Good branding opportunity for next year, potentially. Then people will think, oh, this guy, look at the ego on him. Right, yeah. Well, maybe lastly, sort of an unrelated question, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because you have one of the most eclectic Twitter bios I think I've ever seen. First of all, you're located in the UK. You said you grew up in Boston, right? But you're currently in the UK. And then your bio

says person of many hats, human geneticist, evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, economist. And yet you say, I mostly use this account to tweet about the Baseball Hall of Fame, which seems like a lost opportunity. I'd opportunity. I wish we'd squandered this interview. We could have talked to you about birds and human evolution and the economy. And instead, we've been talking about Hall of Fame results. So how did someone with this background, I mean, first of all, how does someone have all of those different backgrounds at the same time? And you're in the rich tradition of people who seem way overqualified to be doing baseball analysis. And I'm glad that so many over the years have chosen

to dabble in baseball. It's enriched our experience of the sport for everyone. But what a skill set you seem to possess. Yeah, I mean, it's all just different types of math, basically, in the end. Yeah, I guess so. Other than the looking at birds thing, that's just a hobby that turned into a PhD, basically. Well, Darwin did that a lot, and he was a biologist, evolutionary biologist, the OG, I guess so. You know how you conf yourself to Darwin all the time? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, and like I said, I developed the tracker. I didn't, I wasn't intending to give it to anyone. I did it for myself and then decided to release it and now feel a bit obligated to it. But yeah, my social media is just basically Hall of Fame stuff because, I mean, I don't need to tell you two that social media is pretty toxic. So I try not to stay on, and especially now I try not to use Twitter for anything. And I never, I didn't intend to ever reveal who I was. I mostly just joined Twitter to follow people. What's your day job then? How do you apply all of those things? What do you study when you're not forecasting Cooperstown results?

Yeah. So right now I'm working for a small tech bio company that's studying human disease and what genes are, what's the genetic cause of human disease. And I'm building some models of disease and how to predict based on your genetic makeup, which diseases you're most susceptible to, which is one thing I don't, you don't necessarily want to know if you're going to have Alzheimer's disease, but it's more useful in context to then tie that into treatments and try to find drug therapies or other type of therapies that could benefit patients who have these particular genetic makeups. We call it precision medicine. The idea is that this is the next stage of medicine.

One solution doesn't fit every person, and we have to, it's sort of like Hall of Fame models. Every year is different. Every patient is different. And we have to choose the option that works best for you and is most likely to result in a good outcome. Wow. Well, I really value the baseball forecasting work you do. work you do. But please tell me that projecting Hall of Fame results is not standing in the way of your solving all human disease, because I don't know that that would be a worthwhile trade-off for me personally. Well, that's what you can blame for my Gary Sheffield projection

being a bit off. Okay. If that's the excuse, then I will gladly accept that. It seems slightly more important. I mean, this is entertaining, don't get me wrong. But, you know, hopefully this is just your spare time, you know, while you're waiting for your more important to humanity models to run than, you know, maybe tweak the Cooperstown stuff on the side. I assume that you're in the UK for work then. Do you bring up the fact that you have this sideline and some celebrity is a Hall of Fame projection person? Does anyone you know there understand what that means or care? Yeah. Well, I moved to the UK. My wife is English, so we moved a few years. We were

in the US when I started doing tracking. It was actually during my PhD when I first started it. And then we moved back here in 2020, very end of 2020, beginning of 2021. So she wanted to be closer to family. So I moved back here, got this job. I was very happy to move out of academia, frankly. Yeah, I've done a presentation. We sometimes do at work, Friday presentations, people will talk about things they do, and I presented that, and people were quite amused, but no one really understands baseball. Other than I have one colleague who is English and lives in Boston,

and he's my person I can talk about baseball at work with. He's a big Red Sox fan, so we have that in common. Yeah, I guess whichever crowd you're in, if you're with the baseball crowd, they might not understand every aspect of what you do for your day job and vice versa, maybe. But each crowd, you certainly have something to offer. So I'm glad you do this. Thank you so much for coming on and explaining it. And congrats on establishing yourself as the industry standard, the go-to source for Hall of Fame results projections. And maybe we can talk to you again sometime when another ballot rolls around. Or if and when you cure all human disease, that would probably be something that we would want to talk to you about, too.

Yeah. Okay. No pressure. Very special off-season episode. Yes. We knew him when? When he was just famous for doing Hall of Fame projections. Now he's, I don't know, the Jonas Salk of the 21st century. But yeah, thank you very much, Jason. We appreciate it. Thanks. It's it. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. That will do it for today.

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joey manessis no walk off three run digger stop it walk off three run shot oh my. Stop it. Walk off three-run shot. Oh, my gosh. Meg, he's the best player in baseball. I'm back.