Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 255: Listener Emails Like Never Before

Episode Date: July 31, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the consequences of abolishing the trade deadline, baseball’s war on PEDs, time traveling front offices, and more.

We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back! Good morning and welcome to episode 255 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. I was going to make a Mark Zebchinski joke, but then some other stuff happened. What would the joke have been? I don't know. I hadn't thought it through. I'm sure it would have been good. Based on, like, what was the premise?

You know, just that we were going to be discussing some hot trade deadline action and oh yeah that was the only thing that happened for most of the day which i spent spent the whole day with my fingers poised over the keyboard uh waiting for something to happen and then it never really did and then now it has uh at 11 p.m. Eastern. So thank you, teams, for waiting until that hour. So that's what I have to do after we finish recording. I will be writing. Also, we have this weird mystery of Nelson Cruz coming out of a game. Yeah.

Were there handshakes and hugs? No. So far as I know, there were no handshakes or hugs, but he's apparently very likely to be suspended and not appeal. And it makes you wonder whether like baseball is now suspending players in the middle of the game, which I would love. Like, like, it'd be great if they would just snipe them, you know, shoot them with a dart. Yeah. Like midfield umpire hands him a note as he runs the bases or something. or hands him a note as he rounds the bases or something. Closest thing that you could come up with to a pit would be a PED dart sniper.

Yes. Okay, today's listener email show, and maybe tomorrow we'll do a trade deadline wrap thing and do the traditional winners and losers show. Who knows? But today we have emails, and we got a ton of emails this week and we appreciate them all, even if we don't answer them. Sometimes we answer via email and not via voice. But even if we don't answer, we read all of your emails and appreciate

them. And many of them are follow ups to things that we've talked about on the podcast where people just kind of want to tell us something that we didn't mention or something we were wondering about. And they just tell us things and we learn. It's great. So thank you for that. All right. I have all of these emails to read. these emails to read. I'll start, I guess, with this one from Cosmo in Iowa City, who says,

on Tuesday's episode, you kicked around the idea of not having a trade deadline at all. Let's say that two teams ended the season tied for the division title. Neither had a good enough record to win the wild card, so there will be a winner or go home game 163, which is technically a regular season game. Neither team's ace is available to pitch the deciding game. The best they can probably do is start their number three starter on short rest. Let's say that Felix Hernandez was scheduled to become a free agent at the end of the season, and that the Mariners were not going to make him a qualifying offer for financial reasons, so they would not be getting any draft pick compensation when he left as a free agent. The Mariners' season is already complete, and due to the whims of the schedule,

he'd be on normal rest for a game 163. At this point, he would have literally no value to the Mariners. He's the ultimate short-term rental. How much could the Mariners get by auctioning him off to the highest bidder among the two teams with a playoff spot hanging in the balance? He wouldn't be eligible for the postseason but he might make a huge difference in game 163 uh can we just clean this question up sure there it makes no sense for the mariners to ever not offer him to make him a qualifying offer so they're flat

broke they're in debt they have come on it makes no sense okay we're just gonna clean it up we're gonna tidy it up and say that this is a pitcher who was traded at the trade deadline and therefore cannot be given a qualifier. So it's a Felix type pitcher who has been traded and cannot get a qualifying offer. Okay. So you've got a limited market. You've just got these two teams that those are the only people who would be interested in buying him. And I guess there's not a ton of leverage because, as he says, he's not worth anything to his current team anymore. There's a lot of leverage, though, in that two teams, there's two teams theoretically who might be going for him.

I mean, you can play those two off each other. So how much, okay, so let's say it's a league average number three starter is what each of these teams has going how much what what percentage of victory uh increases there from felix over a league average mid-rotation guy in well so a league average mid-rotation guy on short rest so now you now you're maybe talking about you know a two-run swing from him to, to Felix over nine innings probably won't, probably won't be nine innings. So maybe it's a, say it's a, it could be up to a run and a half. Uh, but if you have two teams that are bidding, then you're keeping the other guy from getting him. So it's really

like a three run swing, uh, in one game, that's a huge amount of runs. That's like, that's a lot of runs for one game. It's a good question. It's a good question that I've been asked before and have asked others before. I guess, first off, I don't know. I mean, without the culture of this, it's hard to know. Like, if this were just suddenly legal,

do you think that a team would do it or would they risk kind of backlash for doing it i think they would do it i think they should do it i think i kind of think more teams should uh when they have an impending free agent who maybe they want to bring back or resign i i feel like more teams should trade him and say, hey, we want you back, but we're not going to win this year. This doesn't mean that we don't like you. We hope to resign you. I feel like more teams should do that as it is. I do too. I find it weird that that doesn't happen more. Somebody asked earlier this year, and we didn't answer it, a question about trading Canoe. Somebody asked earlier this year, and we didn't answer it, a question about trading Cano.

And it just feels like, for the most part, if you trade your guy away, it's almost like you fear that you're punting on him. But it shouldn't be. You should be able to have that conversation. I guess maybe it's tampering to get too explicit. Yeah, maybe. Anyways. So what is he worth? I don't anyways so what is he worth i don't know what is he worth uh you know i mean if we're talking about a division and not the wild card plan i would think for a wild card play and it wouldn't be worth a whole lot right uh i mean it'd be worth half as much as uh the division but um i don't know uh name a prospect it's a lot of it's a lot of potential

revenue would you trade uh would you trade the number 75 prospect in the game for felix in one start uh gosh um i guess i feel like yes uh would you trade the number 50 Yes. Would you trade the number 50? No. I don't know what the actual real-life difference between 50 and 75 is. It's probably not a ton after you get out of the top, I don't know, 20 or so. It's kind of a less steep decline from there out. But, I mean, you're're guaranteed if you win that game

you're guaranteed at least one series and a couple home dates and that's a lot of extra revenue and a lot of extra attention uh i don't know whether whether it would feel cheap to do this like you know would it would it feel like less of an accomplishment if you just kind of bring in a ringer from some other team for the last game who has no attachment to your fan base that's what i was asking okay cultural whether the culture would support it because i feel like it might like i i'm that's who i wondered about the backlash is the team trading for a ringer okay um but i, I mean, I don't know. It feels like it might.

It doesn't feel like it would be quite as valuable as making the playoffs on your own at this point. But it's really hard to say. I mean, it's hard to say in real terms, and it's hard to know whether you would want it. Could you root for a player who had been added for one day? Could you, could you root? Like, would you have any qualms whatsoever about rooting for that player to, to do awesome? I don't think I would. I think if it were someone, I think 20, 29, 29 teams would complain just as

29 teams complain about anything. But I think that the fans would be perfectly happy. I think it'd be really exciting. Uh, and you're giving something up. It's not like you're getting him for nothing. Now, what if it were $6 million? You're not getting prospects. You're just paying $6 million. I think that would... I have a feeling that that would be worth it with the potential for extra revenue in playoff games

and selling division know division winner hats and shirts and all that extra stuff i feel like that would probably even out um yeah uh i don't know if it would six million seems a little steep but uh it's it feels different to me doing it and there's at least i I think people who have studied this have found that there's like a year after effect to making the playoffs attendance-wise, where if you make it and you kind of have that aura of a successful team, then you draw better the next year. So when I say that I'm against a trade deadline, is this the natural endpoint of that and do i need to reconsider is this the slippery slope where it's going and does it ruin baseball i don't i don't know that this i mean what have you got four of these but what have you also got right yeah what if you just had your entire lineup replaced but yeah yeah um yeah that's it's a danger i I don't know. I mean, your argument was yesterday that teams should just be allowed to do what they want, right? That they act rationally. And so if they are willing to do this, then we should let them. But it does feel like it could potentially get out of control a little bit.

It feels like we're talking about something that's out of control. Yes. Yeah, maybe it's too dangerous. Maybe we're not ready for this. Uh-huh. Okay, the next question is another hypothetical. I know some of you love the hypothetical questions that we get and some of you don't, but it seems like the people who actually submit emails to us really love the hypothetical questions because half of them are of this nature. Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and the entire 2013 Cubs front office in 1908 with everything they have in 2013 and the power to make baseball decisions for the team. How many World Series do you think the Cubs

could win going forward? This presumes they have all of their current knowledge about sabermetrics, but not who any of the players were. Technology, scouting department, resources, etc., and every other team remains as they are. I realize front office value is drastically affected by pre-free agency, so it may make sense to start the discussion at the beginning in the mid-1970s, but you've got to figure this knowledge alone would give the Cubbies at least 10 to 15 titles no. In other words, what is the value over replacement front office? no in other words what is the value over replacement front office there was a uh there was a reddit once about uh how how much of an advantage you would have if you were somehow able to time travel to like the like the 14th century like whether you would be an advantage

because like you know about ipods and stuff and it was burned somewhere. Well, it was that was sort of the the the theme of the thread is that it was almost impossible to find any advantage that you would have. Basically, the only thing that you would have that they don't that, you know, that for the average person could actually use, because like, I don't know how to write. I don't know how to generate, you know, right. Most of us are using common materials. Right. We could we could exactly have these things, but we couldn't actually build them. There are people who have niche skills that could probably be useful. But for most – the one thing that you would have is you would wash your hands. And just that would increase your survival like a million times. And you could create this –

If you could get soap. And you could like create this – If you could get soap. You could create this dominant race of – dominant city like a village just by telling everybody to wash their hands and boil their water. Like that's it. That's all you have to do. But that's also all you can do. Like you don't have batteries and you don't know how to make them because you're an idiot. But this is different because this pres is that you have the technology somehow

yeah i was i'm trying to think if there would be like what disadvantages would they have what do you think there are disadvantages that they would have uh going back there well i guess maybe no one would trade with them uh because they would be scared of their crazy space age technology um so they might have difficulty with relationships and well every it seems like everyone's you know every so often somebody comes along and talks about how they could you know win like like maury wills uh in the 80s early 80s wrote a book might have been before that about how you know everybody in baseball was dumb and if he were a manager he could win like 25 more games simply by being a smarter manager and like you know i don't know what i don't i don't know what it was but it was like you know

various combinations of small ball and non-small ball and and uh you know he became a manager and it was one of the most disastrous one-year managerial experience experiments ever and um you know uh like various sort of like proto saber matricians have made huge claims that then end up getting walked way back um i mean my suspicion is that there's not first off on the field there's not much they could do that like you could tell them not to bunt and that would save you a couple runs a month maybe and you could have a better lineup and that would save you a couple runs a month maybe. And you could have a better lineup, and that would save you a couple runs a month. But really where sabermetrics matters and where – I mean you could teach your pitchers pitches that don't exist yet.

Well, sort – I couldn't. I couldn't, no. But the entire Cubs front office, probably someone could. The entire – yeah, but I think this question is really more about the front office and less about the coaching staff. Yeah. Don't you? Yes.

But even so, I'm guessing there's someone in the front office who could teach a pitcher how to grip a baseball and throw something. Yeah, we need a time frame put on this because I don't know that you could teach somebody to throw it. Well, you probably, if they've never seen the pitch, you don't have to throw a very good slider, for instance. But I don't know that you could teach somebody to throw it at – well, you probably – if they've never seen the pitch, you don't have to throw a very good slider, for instance. But I don't know. I mean I feel like there's not that much you can do strategy-wise on the field. You can only pick up a little bit here and there.

And like the question notes, the free agency model that a lot of analysis centers on wouldn't exist. And I don't know how much it would help drafting. You certainly, you wouldn't have any of the kind of data that you wouldn't have like the thousands of scouts. I mean, back when you read about what scout, well, there wasn't even really scouting in 1908. But when you read about the scouting in like the 1920s and 30s, it's just, you know, it's really much more about being willing to you know ride your bike 500 miles than it is about any kind of expertise and you know Theo is not going to be any more able to ride a bike 500 miles than anybody else um so I'm just going to go ahead and state that I think that any answer is going to be exaggerated and not true yeah I mean you could you know you could start a farm system uh 20 years

before anyone else did that yeah if you hired it oh yeah well yeah starting a farm system again this is like a timeline thing right if we're talking about one season and it starts tomorrow you can't do that if you're talking about inheriting a team and you're you have it for a decade then yeah you would start if you what Branch Rickey did, and that would build, I mean, Branch Rickey's farm system essentially carried the Cardinals for like four decades. I mean, they were so far ahead of everybody. So if you did that, that would be probably the best thing you could do.

That's probably the answer. That's the best thing you could do. Nelson Cruz has a bruised left quad, by the way. That's why he left the game. Uh-huh. Just like A-Rod. Suspicious. a bruised left quad by the way that's why he left the game uh-huh um just like a rod suspicious um so i have often kind of wondered like if you if you stuck one of us uh in a in a front office like i don't know say in the 70s like pre-beat pre-bill james um and just knowing what we know, but not having access to current technology or

anything, just the accumulated knowledge that we have. And a team would actually listen to us and trust us. How much of a difference could we make? Because, I mean, if we had the stats that, that we have now, I feel like we could make a big difference, but we wouldn't have those stats and they would be tough to, to calculate and tough to, I mean, you couldn't, you could, you could calculate a guy's OBP and look at that when no one else is looking at it maybe, you couldn't you couldn't do uh some of the things that depend on like every play being charted um no but you could do everything that the a's were doing in 2002 short of the you it might take some work you could probably do what they were doing with defense but that would take more work but everything else is basically there for you. Yeah.

And you – yeah, and you would – I don't know. That's a good question. I would guess that just you, I would guess that you could probably add – after three years of running a team, you could improve a team by eight wins annually. Maybe more. Maybe more. I might say more. i'd like to think more maybe i'm overrating us that is kind of crazy to think that like all the teams in the 70s could have been maybe 15 or 20 wins better yeah like like if do you think that's true i mean was no there were smart team i mean the you know the orioles were doing kind of some proto-saber metrics in their scouting and player development departments.

And, I mean, teams were doing interesting things. And it would only take one team being that smart and you would think it would show up. Yeah. And in the first scenario, no one could, in the 1908 with 2013 technology scenario, no one could copy you, really, because they wouldn't have the same technology. But in every other scenario, going back, if you had a little success, then everyone would start doing what you were doing and it wouldn't last that long. you were doing and it wouldn't last that long. But I don't know if the early 2000s or late 1990s A's could make the playoffs several times on a low payroll doing this sort of thing, then I feel like you could probably do even better than that 20, 30 years earlier. I've actually changed my mind. I'm now going to say that in 1908, you could win 20 more games very simply. And it's simply using your pitching staff like a modern pitching staff, hiring a doctor, and telling your hitters to all try to hit home runs.

Not that – I mean you couldn't find a doctor who could perform Tommy John surgery. No, certainly. But just having somebody who asked if your arm hurt. That's it. Just a guy. Does your arm hurt, guy? Yes, no. No, certainly. But just having, having somebody who asked if your arm hurt, that's it. Just a guy. And does your arm hurt guy? Yes. No, just a questionnaire. That's it. Yeah. Does your arm hurt? Uh, I figured asking the pitchers if their arm hurt is worth probably six wins a year. But I mean, if you told these, if, if instead of having pitchers throw 550 innings, I feel like if you just went out and got 12 pitchers and did what pitchers do today and told them strike everybody out and then you told your hitters try to hit home runs, they're not the devil's work like we've been telling you.

Yeah, although dead ball, I don't know that you could do that. Maybe. I guess Babe Ruth could. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay, let's do this one. This comes from Mike.

Okay, this, I guess, will be a quick trade deadline-related one, and kind of we touched on it yesterday. Do you think a GM would talk to ken rosenthal or john hayman to tell them that they would listen on player x yes yes yes so it goes on for a while about that and whether a gm would do that and and yes that is that's exactly what happens not necessarily always a gm but someone uh acting on the GM's orders. Yeah, I mean, I wonder how much the reporters care. I mean, certainly the reporters know that probably a lot of this stuff is put out there,

you know, specifically to put it out there and that they're being used. And I don't know if that is an ethical thing or not. I think maybe because it's baseball and who cares at all that it's not like any information is like fine, whatever. It's just baseball. Yeah. And I it always surprises me the extent to which things will leak or the amount of things that people with baseball teams will tell the press. And this is one of the scenarios, at least, where you can see why there would be some value to that with these rumor monger guys who are reporting all the news. It's because they want to float offers or float players who are available

and also maybe find out who's looking for something else, and it's just an information exchange. Although I feel like if I were in a front office, I'd be so paranoid. Like when we – our prospect staff talks to the scouts all the time, and scouts will give us quotes about players. And I feel like if I were a scout scout i would be way too paranoid to talk to anyone about anything yeah yeah uh all right and now this one's from eric i was just curious what happens with the money owed to a player who is suspended with a rod perhaps looking at losing

about 30 million dollars i wonder where does the money go i assume the yankees don't just get to keep it right that could create some ugly situations where teams could be happy when albatrosses get suspended. Does it go towards a charity or a special fund? I apologize for the lack of whimsy in this one. Yeah, I don't have a conclusive answer on this. I spent some time trying to figure it out, and it doesn't look like the collective bargaining agreement addresses it so far as i can tell and um fines generally uh in sports go to charity and there's protocol for deciding which charity it goes to and who decides which charity it goes to but i don't see any suggestion really anywhere that suggests that suspensions are the same um and in fact when

ozzy guillen got suspended for his cuba comments um the marlins on their own now he's not a player but the marlins on their own uh went ahead and donated it to like some human rights kind of charity like befitting the crime or whatever it was that Ozzie Guillen had. But again, he's not a player, so that's significant. I do know that Dan Brooks asked somebody who knows whether the Yankees would still have to pay A-Rod if he got released before the suspension. And the answer was that yes,

they would have to pay him. Now that doesn't answer the question because they might have to put the money into the pot or they might, you know, have to, I guess, well, so yeah, I mean, gosh, so I'm getting confused. I'm confusing myself but uh they well okay so i guess that isn't i haven't thought that out i don't know if that answers anything um but eric is right i mean this came up because dan and i were talking about the um conflict of interest that a team would have in this case and whether a team would you know happily rat out one guy on the team and maybe not the others. And it does feel like there should be a protocol. Now, I'm going to continue trying to find out.

And if I find out the actual answer tomorrow, I'll update you. But, I mean, there's a huge, huge, huge, huge interest in the Yankees having this. Yes, this is a perfect example of that. Yeah, and it seems kind of weird and unfair. And I've been wondering, I mean, I've been wondering for the last few days before Eric brought it up and made me wonder whether it's going to charity, whether this would be happening, whether the lifetime ban would be happening if A-Rod were a guy making $3 million a year, or whether this is specifically because the league slash one of the owners in the league has such a financial interest in it. I mean, $100 million can make you do some kind of unethical stuff.

And I wonder how much, if any of this is simply a business decision to get out from under that huge, huge debt, huge liability that they have. And it might be the case that none of it is and it might be the case that the money would go to charity anyway. But I would want to know that. I would think that MLB would be would want to be out in front of it if it were the case that it's going to charity. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll keep looking into it, or someone will email and tell us the answer, as often happens.

Okay, this one, got a couple more. This one comes from Chris. A couple weeks ago, The Economist ran a piece on the game theory behind doping in sports. The conclusion of the article was that athletes cheat because the drug screening processes don't do a good job of catching cheaters. The authors argue that those administered during the testing have incentive to skimp on drug tests in order to save face, quote, the fear of how customers would react if more thorough testing did reveal near universal cheating, which anecdotal evidence suggests that in some sports it might better to test sparingly and expose from time to time what is apparently the odd bad apple rather than do the job thoroughly

and find the whole barrel is spoiled and your sport has suddenly vanished in a hailstorm of disqualifications, end quote. Why do you think Major League Baseball is so much more willing than other sports to eradicate banned substances from the game despite all of the brand tarnishing associated with it uh quick quick thought about the the suspended money i wonder if if it does go to charity i wonder who gets the tax write-off like does that because if the team gets a tax write-off then that would also be worth tens and tens of millions of dollars for them uh Okay. So the question is, why is MLB more willing to suspend, to tarnish its brand? Yeah, I guess we're willing to take a harder line with this stuff with that risk. I think that there are two philosophies on deterrence. One is that you deter crime by having extremely strict penalties.

And the other, which I subscribe to, is that you deter crime by having certainty of penalties, by basically making it certain that you're going to get caught. And so baseball is trying to do both, I think. Um, and I sort of appreciate that. I actually come down kind of, I think in, uh, Bud Seelig's court on a lot of, uh, a lot of the things that have been going on lately. Um, but I think the idea is that, um, drug testing is a terribly flawed system. It's the best that they have, but it's really flawed. And so that's why they investigate these things. And that's why they sort of don't draw the line at a positive test. And they just want to sort of, I think that they're kind of inching to a point where if you are even whispered about or if you are suspected by opposing teams,

they will investigate it and they're going to sort of do everything they can to make it seem impossible to get around. Because all the biogenesis stuff coming out, in a lot of ways, it really points out how limited testing is because a lot of these guys didn't test positive even though they were presumably doing drugs. So in a way, it's this big wake-up call to Major League Baseball that if they don't go crazy over it, that the message that they're sending to people is – to players themselves is our system doesn't really work. You can probably get away with it for a long time, and we don't have any other avenue to get you. And so once the biogenesis stuff sort of fell into their laps, they really didn't have much choice. It was either severely weaken the perception of their testing program

or severely strengthen and kind of do this big power grab and say, you know, we're going to take it more seriously than any sport in the world. And that's the only way that we'll ever know that players are clean. I don't think that's going to work. I think the players are going to always be suspected of being dirty anyway. I think that as long as one guy is getting away with it, we're always going to assume that 100 are. But it's a theory. Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me. And I know some aspects of the story seem a little unsavory and the lengths that MLB went to to get this information and the people it had to work with to get this information.

But it's hard to see what other great option they had. I mean, it's been a popular sentiment that now that there's a testing program in place, we should just let that do its thing and not go outside the the bounds of that to to look for people who are doing other things but but that seems sort of silly i mean it'd be it'd be great if that worked and if the tests were perfect and and they'll continue to to try to make it that way uh and make the testing tougher and tougher and more accurate and more accurate. And, you know, like they added HDH testing for this season. But as long as there are ways to get around it and you know about those ways, then, I mean, you almost have to look for ways to supplement the testing or else your testing has no teeth, really.

Why don't we ever disagree? I don't know. I don't think that you and i hold a majority opinion on this and you and i have never talked about it with each other really well we did do a show when this stuff first came out uh and i don't know if we've changed our our tune at all since then i can't really remember what we said. But yeah, I mean, as uncomfortable as maybe I am with some of the way this went down, I mean, it seems like kind of making the best of a bad situation. Yeah, I think at the time when we wondered why Major League Baseball was so intent on getting its best players off the field, I kind of expected us to all react a lot worse to the suspensions.

I mean, they just happen, and we kind of have a field day with them for a day, and then it's like, oh, Ryan Braun's gone for the season. Baseball's still pretty good today without Ryan Braun. It's interesting how kind of easily they go down. I don't know. Craig Calcaterra said the other day, like, lifetime bans sound like a great idea until people start getting banned for life. And that feels true to me. And so I don't know how I'll feel if they start getting, like, really crazy.

But also, it doesn't seem out of the question that lifetime bans might actually be something we got used to pretty quickly. I mean they happen in a lot of sports. I can't imagine. Although sports we don't care about. I can't imagine many people mourning A-Rod's career except for tabloid columnists. No, but I mean a guy like Braun, if somehow Braun got suspended, then it would be like Joe Jackson, right? It would be a potential Hall of Fame career stopped right when it was about to be a Hall of Fame career. It would be kind of brutal.

And then, of course, the problem with a lifetime ban is that that guy lives for like 70 more years. He doesn't disappear. He lives. And even after he would be retired retired he's still alive making noise about being banned you know i mean pete rose yes is pete rose like the ban was like the wasn't that probably wasn't that hard for like the first five years but it's like he's still around like we're stuck with this guy forever now and he was retired. If they'd suspended him for two years, the suspension would have ended and we would have never heard from him again, except for the one

day that he got elected into Cooperstown. Right. Yeah. And I guess when the story originally surfaced, I was sort of skeptical that this stuff would stand up, which was part of why I was a little dubious about it. It just seemed like kind of an unreliable source and some names written on pieces of paper and it didn't seem like something that players would ever accept. But clearly the information was pretty good, it seems. So in retrospect, it kind of makes sense. Okay, last one, if we can squeeze this in before Sam's battery dies, Uh, so in retrospect, uh, kind of makes sense. Okay.

Uh, last one, if we can squeeze this in before Sam's battery dies, uh, which is about to do, um, this one is from Sadab Janab. I hope I pronounced that right because he, he put in parentheses after his name. Don't pronounce my name wrong. Uh, he says, I'm a longtime listener of the show. I always have amazing questions to ask, but I always forget them by the time I get to a computer. So you'll just have to make do with this one for now. I've only been a baseball fan for about five years. I live in England, so I'm still getting used to who's who and what's what. Your show and the thought-provoking topics

you bring up have been a huge factor in my learning, which sort of scares me if he's learning from us. I am nominally a White Sox fan, although this season I've begun to follow the Orioles and Pirates just because this whole season is already a dead rubber for the White Sox, and there's nothing worse than sports without competition. Excellent cricket term, dead rubber. Except perhaps infuriating anachronistic relics. I love Hawk Harrelson.

His turns of phrases and obscene partisanship always makes me smile, but there is a point where you just have to ignore him. So his question is, what other things are there in baseball that are ostensibly and empirically stupid, but that you have to begrudgingly admit the game is still better for having? Well, not Hawk Harrelson. I will never get on the there's this old there's a saying that uh uh if they if they survive long enough all prost uh politicians prostitutes and buildings gain respectability and i i see this is happening with hawk there's this

movement to make hawk like legend. Nope, never. Not doing it. Bless his heart. Don't mind that he has a job. It's really easy for me to switch to the other feed. But I tell you, that moment when I turn on MLB TV and I click on the White Sox game and I accidentally just click home team just for like that split second. It's like the worst moment of my week. Probably a great guy. Let's see the that's the the worst moment of my week um probably a great guy um let's see what was the question oh yeah things that are empirically stupid but i like anyway

well the postseason is empirically stupid uh it doesn't make any sense for determining the best team um to the point where you have to just assume that it's not even trying at this point and i love it it's a it's a spectacular month and i was just uh today thinking about how fun october is going to be when we're you know writing about every single game yes you know like i like that that's fun yeah i mean 16 games just have 15 15 games just happened uh no 16 17 i think 17 games happened today and they all just disappear and the post season's great because they don't they they uh they all get written about um and so i love the post season and that's about the only thing i could think of i like uh i like umpire manager

arguments many of them many of them are completely unnecessary if we had a a more you know an expanded replay system which i support uh most of those arguments would disappear because you could just check the replay instead of yelling at each other and kicking dirt and throwing caps and everything but uh i enjoy those i don't i do sort of like – I wouldn't manage my team this way, but I do like the closer. Like I actually enjoy the spectacle of the closer coming out in the ninth inning. If I ran a team, I would be perfectly happy to have 29 other teams do it, and I don't. So I do kind of like that. Closer is fun. It would be a spectacle if you just had a guy come in whenever the jam was. Yeah, I generally like roles.

I like players in roles, and they're almost always things that, again, I would try to get away from if it were my team. But I like the speedy leadoff hitter. I like that. I like pretty much anybody who has a role. Okay. All right, we done? Sure. Okay, All right. We done? Sure. Okay.

We're done. Thank you for sending us so many questions. You can send more at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Thank you for rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Please do that if you haven't yet. And we are also accepting sponsors, which is something that I feel weird about actually saying, but it's a thing. If you would like us to advertise something for you, we are willing to do that, probably. So you can email us about that. And we'll be back tomorrow with maybe some trade deadline discussion.