Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 227: Julio Urias and Young Pitchers/Prospects Switching Positions/Jose Iglesias and High BABIPs/Goodbye Base Coaches

Episode Date: June 19, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about young pitchers, prospects switching positions, Jose Iglesias’ high BABIP, and base coaches....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 And I told him, I said, Iggy, there's no way in life that you have hand-eye coordination like that and you can't hit. That's impossible. So you just need to use it. Good morning and welcome to episode 227 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. It's Wednesday. It's email Wednesday. We have emails to talk about. Do we have any personal baggage regarding our feelings about this show to talk about,
Starting point is 00:00:32 or can we just go straight into the baseball content today? We can probably just start talking about baseball. All right. So the last, the most recent question that we got is the first one we're going to read. It's from Michael, who notes that with the ascent of many of the top pitching prospects to the majors and the injury to Dylan Bundy, who becomes the top pitching prospect in the minors, I would love to hear the debate between Tywon Walker, Archie Bradley, or anyone else you believe is in the conversation and learn more
Starting point is 00:01:01 about their repertoires and development. Well, that's not what we're going to do. and learn more about their repertoires and development. Well, that's not what we're going to do. It's not us at all. No, wrong podcast. However, I would also like to hear that. So please send that question to fringeaverage at fringeaverage.fringeaverage. Yes.
Starting point is 00:01:21 I do want to talk about prospects, though. Okay. Two elements of this, or two things that came to mind in reading this question one is uh ben are you familiar with julio or i or urias yes i've i've read about him and listened to things about him interesting story it's uh i'm i'm i'm just terrified that this man exists i guess he's not a man. He's 16 years old. He's 16 years old, and he's pitching in full season ball. He's a Dodgers prospect from Mexico.
Starting point is 00:01:52 He's 5'11", 160, but he's only 16, and he's left-handed. And in his five outings in full season ball, he has an ERA of 3. He has better than a strikeout per inning and this is just incredible to me i mean 16 it's like it's nuts it's crazy nuts and so he is not the answer to who's the best prospect in baseball that is not that is not the answer however uh uh he is something he is something incredible He is something incredible. And so I guess I just wanted to ask you a question. If you had one start that you needed to win,
Starting point is 00:02:35 and you can pick your level. I honestly don't even care what level it is. It could be a high school game or it could be a major league game in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals or something. major league game in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals or something. And you could have either Julio Urias. Should we agree on this?
Starting point is 00:02:53 Yeah, I think that's right. Julio Urias now or Julio Urias in one year. And you don't know anything about what's going to happen in a year. He could suck. I mean, we've only seen him for 17 innings. He could get worse. He could lose his control. And he could be in a cast. Yeah, that's true.
Starting point is 00:03:16 And you've got to win this. I mean, Ben, this is an important decision. Your podcast partner's daughter's life depends on this. So the game itself will be played a year from now or whatever, and he will be placed into some sort of preservation until then, if I choose the current Rios? Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:03:41 I expect that he will be a better player in a year I expect that he will have a higher true talent at that time than he does now so I guess it does come down to the injury risk and the risk that he will not be pitching at all then
Starting point is 00:04:00 and then balanced weight against the degree to which he will have improved in a year. I guess, I mean, if my life depends on it, and we're just talking about a 16-year-old pitcher versus a 17-year-old pitcher, I guess I would go with the current guy, I think. I think he would be better if he's healthy at that time, but there's a significant risk that he won't be able to make that start for whatever reason, whereas
Starting point is 00:04:29 now I know that he can. So I think I'll take that. I will take the Urias in the hand. Okay, I've got four follow-ups. Jeez, okay. Urias now, or Urias at age 18? That makes it more interesting i guess i mean do i have a good bullpen can i well uh like like if he's no you can't it's just him
Starting point is 00:05:01 it's only just him he's gotta if he has no arms he has to kick the ball okay and he can't be replaced he cannot be replaced that's right alright I guess it doesn't matter what the competition level is really yeah I don't think it would
Starting point is 00:05:21 that's why I left it up to you alright well by 18 I mean he could be Yeah, I don't think it would. That's why I left it up to you. All right. Well, by 18, I mean, he could be – there's some talk that he could be promoted again this year that he might not even be done. Oh, come on, man. Come on. I've heard that.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Too sexy. I've heard very positive things about him. It's going to be him and Puig in the All-Star. He's going to be starting the All-Star game. Yeah. And Puig's going to be batting cleanup. I guess I'll take the 18-year-old. Okay.
Starting point is 00:06:00 16 or 22, which is six years from now, Ben. Six years from now. Yeah. But on the other hand, if he develops, then he might, I mean, you know, the talent difference between a 22-year-old ace and a 16-year-old ace is now so sizable that maybe you take the risk, but the risk is we can't predict anything six years out. We cannot.
Starting point is 00:06:24 There's, like, seriously not one thing that humans are't predict anything six years out we cannot there's like seriously not one thing that humans are capable of predicting six years out we cannot predict anything we can predict which episode we will be on by then uh yeah well i can pretty much guarantee you what number we will not um at. 22. Okay. So the thing about him is that my understanding... Jeez, that would be 1,700 episodes. By then we'll have had Kevin on 10 more times. I guess, I mean, my understanding of him is that he doesn't really have ace potential he's more of he's more of a mid rotation guy don't yeah don't you think that's just don't you think that's
Starting point is 00:07:12 just people saying that because he's small oh yeah maybe maybe so I don't know by 22 and so we can't... What could you possibly be looking up? What could you be typing that would help you make this decision? All right. God, that's so far away. I guess I'll take the current guy. All right, so then I don't even have to Ask you about 26 Well okay so then the last
Starting point is 00:07:50 Question is What age If you could pick him at any age What age would it be Probably Like 20 I remember
Starting point is 00:08:06 a post on the book blog about pitchers and if I'm remembering it correctly the idea was basically that anytime a pitcher is pitching well no matter what age he is anytime he's pitching well you should bet on him being worse the next year
Starting point is 00:08:21 is that true when a guy is in A ball we weren't talking about 16 yards worse the next year. Is that true when a guy is in Able? Well, that's the thing. We weren't talking about 16-year-olds. That post was not talking about 16-year-olds. I think it was talking about like 21 and 22-year-olds in the majors. And so what got me thinking about this is wondering whether that would apply to a 16-year-old. And I'm not totally sure that it wouldn't. And there's probably a decent chance that this is as –
Starting point is 00:08:52 I don't think it's true. It's probably not true for a 6-year-old. Yeah, I don't think it's true for a 6-year-old. But what age do you think is the cutoff? Do you think it's true for a 19-year-old? I mean it's always just one pitch away. Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all thing. I mean, we can talk about average, but it will vary from guy to guy.
Starting point is 00:09:20 I don't know. I would think that by your very early 20s, you are probably – I mean, I don't know. I would think that by your very early 20s, you are – I mean, I don't know. There are certainly guys who get better much later in their careers. Well, lots of guys get better. It's just that lots of guys get worse. Yes. We're talking about the mean. Yes.
Starting point is 00:09:40 I guess – I don't know. I guess I would say like 20-ish, I would guess. So if a 19-year-old is pitching well, you'd rather have him a year later. But if a 20-year-old is pitching well, you'd just take him right then. You wouldn't get greedy. Yeah, sure. Excellent question, which we didn't answer at all. Not done with it. Not done with it, in fact. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:10:05 The other thing I was thinking about with this question is that it really reinforced to me how reliant I am on prospect ranking lists. And you get to this point in June, you're completely helpless when it comes to evaluating two prospects who are fairly similar to each other. And I don't even really have a good – a lot of times I don't really have a good sense. I know if a guy's stock has generally gone up or not, but I often don't know whether it's gone from he's ranked 30th to 38th or 30th to off the list completely. And it's just such a weird system that we have where basically we do this once a year and sort of twice. I know like Keith updates and we update in the summer. Yeah, I kind of cheat because I've seen Jason Parks' In Progress top 50 list, which I think will be published next week at BP.
Starting point is 00:10:58 So I've seen that. I see. But yeah. Well, the top hundreds are so fascinating because they come out five months after the last pitch was thrown, so they almost couldn't possibly be any less tied to reality. And then we, for the most part, we rely on those for a full season. And so when the trade deadline comes, a lot of people will still be looking at those rankings. a lot of people will still be looking at those rankings. And our updated Top 50 helps things,
Starting point is 00:11:32 but I know that when so-and-so gets traded to whatever team, people are going to look at the team prospect rankings and go, oh, he was ranked seventh. And it just seems to me that there's this huge market out there for some credible prospect ranker, and maybe it's us, to just do a rolling ranking. Just every day updates. Yes, I proposed that once, actually. And so what was the pushback?
Starting point is 00:11:54 I can see the sources hating it, because they don't want us to be too obsessed with the short term on these guys. But do you remember if there was pushback or why? I think Jason spoke to me for a few days after I proposed that. Because it's a work? Yeah, it's just a crazy amount of research. I mean, the amount of work that he puts into those top 10s and top 101s and everything, I mean, it takes him just hours
Starting point is 00:12:21 and hours and hours of talking to people and seeing players and ranking them and moving them around and it just seemed like it would be just a prohibitive amount of work to maintain it constantly and and to resist the urge to overreact to small samples and just be moving guys up and down after they went over four or or something or had a good start. And you just have to be in constant contact with your sources and just sounded kind of like a nightmare. It would be really cool for those of us who don't know as much about prospects to have that kind of constantly refreshed list to consult at any time.
Starting point is 00:13:00 That would be awesome. But maybe there's kind of a middle ground where we could do it more often than twice a year, but not constantly. Yeah, it's by far our biggest trafficked article of the year. I imagine it's everybody who does it's biggest trafficked article of the year. So, I mean, clearly there's a desire for this. And it's, I mean, there's a desire for this and and it's I mean there's some curiosity because you're seeing these
Starting point is 00:13:29 guys in spring training but in a lot of ways it couldn't possibly come at a less useful time too because nobody's getting traded in you know March there's no prospects getting traded in March there's some roster decisions being made and of course I guess you're drafting your fantasy keeper league so never mind there's a big reason to have it in march but uh yeah i i i would consume it anyway
Starting point is 00:13:48 uh that's that that's the end of that question yeah all right uh so steve writes uh as of june 15th so this was four days ago uh jose iglesias is hitting 451 in 89 plate appearances he goes over some more numbers, does some math, says meeting his BABIP is 529. His minor league career BABIP is 278. And I mentioned Jose Iglesias' BABIP in an article on Tuesday, and at the time it was, I believe, down to 507. Nonetheless, the point remains.
Starting point is 00:14:23 So then Steve says, assuming the null hypothesis of a 300 BABIP, the likelihood of a BABIP this far from 300 over a sample of 68 balls in play is 0.01%. That's one in 10,000. So if there are 500 player seasons each year with 89 plate appearances or more, we should expect someone to get this lucky once on average in each 20 year period. we should expect someone to get this lucky once on average in each 20-year period. And so he asked, should we be updating, should he be Bayesian updating his views on Iglesias? And so I had Ryan Lind, our stats research extraordinaire, run some numbers just to find out how rare this is. And first of all, there's a, you know, I don't know, maybe there's not, maybe Steve had this in mind when he said it,
Starting point is 00:15:11 but there's some logical issue with the premise, which is that we would only look at the first 89 plate appearances of the season. Clearly guys are having 89 plate appearance samples throughout the year. And so you would expect it to happen a lot more than every 20 years and it probably does it just isn't quite so visible so I had Ryan look at both both things the first 100 plate appearances because Iglesias is now at well he was at 99 coming into today at 507 so at worst he was going to be over 500 and let me know how many guys had started a season with a babbitt over 500 in their first hundred plate appearances and then looking at guys who had had hidden babbitts over 500 and um in fact uh the the starting a season thing
Starting point is 00:15:59 has happened now nine times since 1950. So a little bit more than once a decade, not much more than once a decade. That happened once in 1958, then 1970, and then once in 83, and then once in 94. So it was going about once a decade at that point, a little less. And it's sped up a little since then. The last one before Iglesias was Brian LaHare, actually, who did it last year. Before that was B.J. Upton in 2007, who was at 577. And other than LaHare, and I guess Billy Graberkovics.
Starting point is 00:16:47 These are all sort of elite kind of hitters. I guess Uton's not really an elite kind of hitter either but manny is one of them museals one of them karu is one of them paul o'neill is one of them wally joiner is one of them anyway uh so yeah it is pretty rare and it probably happens uh i guess not quite as often as he or i guess uh not quite as rarely as he calculated it should, but kind of close. So then if you look at any 100 plate appearance stretch, this is much more common. It looks like there were 5, 10, 15, 20 last year, 20 players who did this in a 100 plate appearance stretch. The highest seems to be Joey Votto at 583,
Starting point is 00:17:28 Dexter Fowler was at 577, and it's mostly good hitters, but it's not entirely good hitters. I guess you're more likely to do it if you're a patient hitter, right, who puts fewer balls in play. Oh, right. Yeah, that makes sense because we did it by plate appearances instead of balls in play. And so, yeah, that's a good point. Like Votto's 100 plate appearances might be 75 plate appearances while – 75 at bats.
Starting point is 00:17:58 Let's see. 75 balls in play, right. Whereas Carlos Gomez's similar stretch might be 92 balls in play. Or, yeah, I guess at bats, yeah, because then, well, it's also if you're striking out a lot, a player who strikes out a lot would be more likely to do it too. There have been four this year, Mauer and Votto, both on there again for the second year in a row.
Starting point is 00:18:24 And so he went back to 2010, on there again for the second year in a row. So he went back to 2010 and Maurer also in 2010, incidentally. So he does this about once a year, which is kind of crazy. And Votto's 580, whatever I said it was, is the highest over the past four years. So to answer the question, does this change your opinion about iglesias uh or do you think this is this should make you reevaluate iglesias's
Starting point is 00:18:53 true babbit potential if not necessarily his offensive potential at least his babbit potential uh well anytime i mean anytime anyone does anything you you incorporate it right into your projection of of how good they actually are so sure i mean if he has a hype abib over a certain sample then you you incorporate that and you maybe you use a little less of the league average when you regress what you expect him to do going forward alright give me your numbers though let's say I told you that
Starting point is 00:19:32 God himself came down and told me in April that Iglesias was a 295 true BABIP talent what is it now? maybe like 300 yeah i was i was gonna say three or four points i'd give them three or four points which is not that much which is not noticeable yeah right so basically it changes it changes nothing in our mindset i it does in a weird way it does
Starting point is 00:20:03 make me kind of take him a bit more seriously as a hitter overall um and i don't know that i that should i it probably it probably shouldn't but i haven't watched his hits really uh i haven't seen whether they're they're all fluky so that would change i guess that would change my opinion a little bit if i actually sat down and did that. Yeah, I watched 10 of them in great detail and also 10 of his outs. And he looks fairly credible out there. He can turn on a bad pitch and he runs well, which matters. And he goes the other way and hits a few line drives.
Starting point is 00:20:38 So I don't think he's much of a hitter. But if I just watched that guy for 20 plate appearances i would i would have a hard time believing that he's the the guy who um you know was supposed to have a bat so bad that it might not even support the best glove in the game uh Okay. Shall I read another one? Sure. All right. Brad asks, imagine a world without base coaches and let us know what it would be like. Wouldn't less prudent base running
Starting point is 00:21:14 make the game more exciting? This seems like a lot of the questions that we both bring up ourselves or get that are kind of like how to change the game. There are various genres of these questions and one of them is make the players worse like would it be more fun to make the players worse uh and certainly um like the pit the pit idea is all about making the players fail and i wonder what it is about uh me and about emailers like Brad who – and I kind of agree with him – who think it's more fun to watch a kind of zanier, madcap game where the players are put in a position to fail more often.
Starting point is 00:21:58 Yeah. Because, I mean, certainly I am a person who makes his living creating gifts of such things. And so anything that is slightly out of the ordinary is appealing to me. But if you're just watching, what's the lure, I wonder? I don't know. But it's only appealing because it is slightly – I mean it's very out of the ordinary, right? I mean most of the things that we gif are kind of – I mean I don't know. People gif everything now.
Starting point is 00:22:36 But if this kind of zany stuff were happening all the time, I wonder if we would just get tired of it and want the good crisp baseball that we're used to back. Well, I think the way that it works is not that – is that when you put more strain on the system, you get more possibilities for zaniness. It wouldn't be the same zaniness over and over and over. I think, you know, if you're, for instance, if you don't have a third base coach, well, sure, there's the possibility that you're going to get thrown out at home. There's also the possibility that you're, for instance, going to get deked by the third baseman and end up stopping at third while the guy rounding second
Starting point is 00:23:04 who knows that the outfielder hasn't even picked up the ball yet, uh, tears around and then runs head on into you, right? That's also a possibility. And there's the possibility that you're looking over your shoulder, uh, as you round third base and you trip, stumble and fall into the dugout. Uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's the, it's the possibilities that lack of rigidity opens the door to. Yeah, and I don't know that it would make that big a difference to take away the base coaches. I don't think you'd see crazy stuff happening routinely. No, I think that, in fact, the idea when i sat and considered it for a few minutes uh led me to wonder why there are batting up base coaches it seems like it seems like quite an
Starting point is 00:23:54 expense for guys who don't do much players might just end up being more cautious because there are no base coaches there and they might be less willing to take risks or or do something that would end up looking silly right because i mean they wouldn't have that safety net of a coach who's supposed to tell them whether they should try to take that extra base so maybe they would just not take the extra base or i don't know i could see it going either way yeah i guess i would want to know how much uh the first base coach matters for stolen bases. I don't know if anybody's done the math or tried to actually find it. If they haven't, then probably Russell will have something for us by the time we wake up in the morning.
Starting point is 00:24:36 But I could see that being a case where a first base coach earns his $200,000 a year or whatever he gets pretty quickly. But as far as the other stuff, the third base coach, it seems to be he relays the signs and he does about 99 calls out of 100 or 99 decisions out of 100 that anybody could do. And then he does one out of 100 that takes some real skill. anybody could do and then he does one out of a hundred that takes some real skill and uh and i don't begrudge the value that that uh one is is worth but it just feels like you're carrying an extra guy around the the team playing all the time you're you're you know paying a salary it's and all that stuff i just wonder whether it's uh i don't know. I mean, why not just make the 25th man on the roster stand out there and wave his arm? I guess the answer is obvious. However,
Starting point is 00:25:35 in answering Brad's question and thinking of it that way, my guess is that most of the difference would be pretty small. It would just be a slightly less efficient game. And I don't know. I could probably get behind it. I don't know. If there weren't base coaches, if we had made it to this point in history without professional base coaches and a team like the Rays hired a base coach, would we be talking about it breathlessly as the new money ball, do you think? Probably. You think so? If the Rays did it.
Starting point is 00:26:09 Some people would. What if the Rockies did it? Yeah, if the Rockies did it, then it might kind of go in the same bucket as other things that the Rockies have done, like the pitch count stuff and having multiple GMs or guys who split the GM role. I think they have people who are in charge of each affiliate or something
Starting point is 00:26:32 instead of roving instructors. There's something like that that they've tried that's unorthodox. So, yeah, probably it would fall into that same category. But I don't know. I mean, probably you would think that the base coaches developed out of a need for base coaches right i mean well you certainly i mean i don't know this but my guess is that the the manager probably stood at third base and did the third base coaching for a large part of history. Yeah, there were definitely smaller coaching staffs that have become more specialized.
Starting point is 00:27:10 So the base coach could just be the evolution of managers who just think it's beneath them to stand for three hours. Or just have more things to do. Yeah, and maybe have more things to do. Everybody likes to have more FTE. Everybody who has a payroll loves to get more FTE under their umbrella. So maybe somebody just fought for that position. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:27:39 Could have looked this up. Could have done the research. Would have taken about 40 seconds. Could have. Too late now so okay so uh this question comes from alan uh he wants to know how many organizations would move a capable third base prospect with a top bat like nick castellanos off of third base to left field while their third baseman and first baseman are below league average defensively, he says this is to allow Victor Martinez to DH, who is again proving that a missing year of playing time is gigantic in any pro sport, not to mention at 37 years old. I think Martinez is 34 years old.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Fielder at DH, Cabrera at first base, Castellanos at third, and Garcia in left is an enormous defensive upgrade. While there's no drop in the lineup, please explain why the Tigers are going down this road. So I thought we could talk a little bit about position switches. I don't know that much about Castellanos' defense. I happened to see him this past weekend in that game that I saw in Syracuse. They were playing Toledo and he was there. And I came in with really high expectations because Mark Anderson on our minor league email list
Starting point is 00:28:56 had just been telling everyone how amazing Castellanos had been lately. And he has. I mean, for the last couple months, he's been hitting really, really well as I think the youngest position player in the International League with an even strikeout to walk ratio. So I was expecting great things. And he went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts. And if I hadn't known that he was the best prospect on the field, I never would have known that he was the best prospect on the field. prospect on the field, I never would have known that he was the best prospect on the field.
Starting point is 00:29:29 It made me think of the thing that you wrote recently when you went to a Cal League game and you talked about how that pitcher who was a total non-prospect looked like a prospect to you. And you were shocked to learn that he is nothing. So that's about how I would have felt about Castellanos. So he was playing left, so I haven't seen him play third. I don't know. I was listening to another podcast last week, the Baseball America podcast. It was with, I think, Matt Eddy and Ben Badler, and they were talking about Castellanos. I think Matt Eddy and Ben Badler, and they were talking about Castellanos,
Starting point is 00:30:10 and they basically said that he would not be the worst third baseman in Major League Baseball, that he would probably be a better third baseman than Miguel Cabrera. Defensively. Yeah, defensively. That he wouldn't be good there, but he wouldn't be unplayable there. So I guess what is the point of moving him then, I wonder? And it made me kind of think about the Jerickson profile news. I mean, that is, I guess, more understandable that the Rangers are moving him to left for now or converting him into an outfielder because they haven't had a very good hitting left fielder this year and
Starting point is 00:30:45 they're trying to find a way to to shoehorn him into this lineup and and you know not affect his development um so they're moving him just continuing continually down the defensive spectrum uh to less and less valuable defensive positions He's a guy who can play shortstop adequately or well, and normally you want the people who can do that doing that, but they moved him to second to accommodate the player they already had, and now they're moving him to left to accommodate another player that they already have, for now at least. another player that they already have for now at least.
Starting point is 00:31:25 So I guess it's, it's you just constantly have to evaluate whether, whether, I mean, the thing is that, that when you move a guy, if he's capable of playing the position that you're moving him from, everyone still knows that,
Starting point is 00:31:43 I guess, right? I mean, he doesn't necessarily lose the ability to play that position so you're not you're not really depreciating him i guess if you're if you're thinking about trading him another organization still knows that he can play the position that you're moving him from and that you're moving him so that you can get more people into the lineup or make room for someone else. And maybe he wouldn't go for less just because he's playing a less valuable position.
Starting point is 00:32:19 In the Tigers case, I don't know, really, unless they think that he's worse defensively than what I've heard and they think he can't play the position. I don't know. I kind of, I believe in Martinez's ability to bounce back, I guess. And maybe he's not ready to come up anyway. As I mentioned, he is really young,
Starting point is 00:32:38 even though he is hitting very well. But I don't know. I mean, you'd think long-term, Cabrera won't stay at third for, for that much longer, probably. I was sort of surprised that he has managed to do as well as he has there. So you figure long-term he will be a DH or he'll move to first and Fielder will DH or something. Um, so there will be a spot for Castellanos there eventually. So I guess maybe it's just a short term thing and doesn't really affect the long term. Do you have any theories? Uh, well, I think with the Tigers, it's, um, it's maybe just not quite as attractive an
Starting point is 00:33:20 option as, as, as Alan, uh Alan put it. I mean, I didn't realize how bad Castellanos was as a third baseman. Or, you know, I too sort of, without knowing that much, sort of just presumed that they moved him off the position because that's where the organizational need was. But it sounds like they moved him off because he's not probably going to be a third baseman, right? I mean, that sort of sounds like what you were saying or he wouldn't be the worst, but he's certainly not, not anywhere near the best or probably even average. So, uh, you know,
Starting point is 00:33:55 it's not a terrible decision. Uh, it happens if it weren't for the, uh, if it weren't for the, the easy conspiracy theorizing that we might generate based on the Tigers roster, we might not have even noticed such a move. And then I also kind of think that Victor Martinez is, um, probably still a capable bat. And, uh, even if he's not, I could certainly understand why the Tigers wouldn't have given up on him. So to me, it's just a sort of a circumstances thing.
Starting point is 00:34:23 So to me, it's just sort of a circumstances thing. With Rangers, it's – I don't know. I mean the thing about the Rangers is that it's hard to make a big change right now. It would be hard to make Ian Kinzler play first base right now or something like that. It would ruffle some feathers. It would be weird. It would be a lot of drama, and it might not work, and then you've got to undo everything,
Starting point is 00:34:49 and if you have to undo everything, it's just a lot more feathers and drama and stuff. The thing about the Rangers is this was just so obviously coming down the line, unless you thought Profar wasn't going to come up at all this year, which would have been unlikely and probably counterproductive. You just wonder, like, why didn't they do something about this in spring training? I guess they tried or suggested that Kinsler should move,
Starting point is 00:35:13 and he kind of balked at that. Yeah, that's why you do it in spring training, so you can try again. I mean, like, I don't know what happened. I don't know what balking was like, but, I mean, that's why you do it in spring training because you have six weeks to try to figure out a way to make it happen. Michael Young initially balked at moving to third, too. Then midway through his first season at third base, we were hearing about what a team player he was. You have the cushion to get things done in spring that you can't really do now. And so, you know, now it's like they might not quite be capitalizing on profile. I mean, ideally, you'd love to have everybody playing in their position of maximum benefit.
Starting point is 00:35:56 But, I mean, it's not like a problem that they have to get jerks and profile and bats somewhere. I mean, they have a lot of good players. It's a decent problem to have. Yeah. Tom Wilhelmsen just came in in the eighth of a one-run game. Is there a closer controversy? Did they switch him out? I mean, I know he's been terrible.
Starting point is 00:36:17 Yeah, he's been bad. I don't know. Did they announce? Have they announced? As a non-fantasy player, I don't necessarily always have my finger on the pulse of the Closers set up man battles. But there has been talk, right, about making Caps the Closer.
Starting point is 00:36:32 Yeah. Talk. I had not heard an announcement of the Spools. Maybe it's happening right now. Yeah. Well, he just blew the lead. Now we won't get to see Caps. We won't even get to know. Unless they... Alright. Cool. Great. We won't even get to know. Unless they squint. Alright, cool. Great. Great show.
Starting point is 00:36:48 Good show, Ben. Good tips. Alright, good. So we'll be back tomorrow with another one of these.

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