Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 270: Listener Email Answers in Search of a Theme

Episode Date: August 21, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about when every team will have won a World Series, the best baseball Kickstarters, rooting for draft picks, one-pitch pitchers, and more.

Wait a minute. Cubs win World Series. Against Miami? Yeah, it's something, huh? Who would have thought? Hundreds of one-shots. I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season, put some money on the Cubs. I just meant Miami. What did you just say? I said I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season, put some money on the Cubbies. of the season. Put some money on the cubbies.

Good morning and welcome to episode 270 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseball prospectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. I kind of have this vague memory of 270 being an important number in baseball history, like from my childhood, and I can't imagine what it would be. It's nothing, right right 270 doesn't mean anything right i can't think of it meaning anything no i think probably what i'm remembering is like uh i'm guessing that somebody who was a veteran around the time that i was a big card collector uh probably would have had maybe 270 wins and i saw his baseball card or something so like maybe it's like Tommy John had 270 wins, something along those lines, which isn't a very big part of baseball history. No.

Vernon Wells has 270 career home runs. That's probably it. Yeah, I think that's one of those pantheon numbers. Before we go, I guess I should just real quickly, do you have any thoughts about Ryan Dempster being fake suspended? You talk about it first. I was just looking something up. Oh, okay.

Ryan Dempster got suspended for throwing at Alex Rodriguez, and it's one of those suspensions where it's like it's five days,. So he's in a way being punished, but really isn't. And it seemed like a lot of people were upset that he wasn't being punished because of how blatantly he threw at Alex Rodriguez. And I don't know. I don't care. I don't care about your opinion. That's what I mean. Yeah, I don't know. I wasn't following any Twitter outrage. I don't know what people were saying but um i i guess my reaction would be that there should be some real penalty um whether it's missing time or losing pay or something um because yeah i don't yeah yeah i i i don't like i don't like how arbitrarily it's sort of decided whether you get suspended for throwing at a player or not. It seems like guys throw at players, obviously, quite a bit.

And it only turns into something if it turns into something, right? Like the act itself is not punished. It's usually the subsequent things, like whether there's outrage or usually whether there's another, you know, a fight. Basically, if the batter charges you, you get suspended. But if the batter doesn't charge you, you don't get suspended. And I find it kind of arbitrary and I would like it to be, you know, a little bit more uniformly. I'm against throwing intentionally at batters, but I'm also kind of against selective prosecution of any laws. All right.

It was a particularly blatant, intentional one. batters, but I'm also kind of against selective prosecution of any laws. All right. Let's go. It was a particularly blatant, intentional one. So, uh, yeah, I know, but I don't know. The particularity of it doesn't really sway me. The intention is what sways me. 270 career wins, by the way. Uh, Burley Grimes and Mike Messina, one of my favorite pitchers. I guess it's going to remain a mystery. Yeah. I wanted to ask you whether, in light of Jeff Francor being designated for assignment, whether this is the end. Do you think there's a chance that this is the end? No, goodness, no. No?

How many more chances? We talked about whether Delman Young would last to 30 as a major leaguer or pass 30. Jeff Rancourt turns 30 next January. I mean, realistically, how many more chances can he get? I mean, he's been so, so bad for some. Oh, come on. Dontrell Willis is currently pitching in AAA. But he's a lefty and a former.

Way worse. Way, way, way worse, though. Way worse. Like, you have to go back and, I mean, look at what Dontrell Willis has done. He's so much worse than Francoeur. Francoeur is just slightly below a credible major leaguer. Dontrell is below a credible international leaguer. I mean, an independent leaguer.

And Francoeur is, I mean, if you trust that Francoeur really is genuinely a good guy, I think there's reason to believe that there's value to having a good guy. Every team kind of wants to have one of those, and I don't begrudge them that. So yeah, he'll get some more chances. And I hope he does. I didn't mind when the Giants traded for him. I don't mind when any team signs him particularly, as long as it's not a three-year deal or whatever the Royals gave him coming off his sort of one fluky good year. Yeah, I guess. I mean, Dantrell, there was always the possibility of a role change where it seemed like he would be a good candidate to be a loogie if he would embrace that.

So there was always that. And he was better to begin with than just the, you know, the lefty pitcher is just a more prized skill set than the outfielder. I know, I know. Last I remember looking at him, he had like 32 walks in 21 innings. I don't know. I don't know how many more chances he gets. At some point, some team will say, why don't you be a coach for

us because you're such a great guy. I don't know. Maybe, okay. He'll get a couple more shots, but I don't see it lasting that much longer. All right, so this is the email show, although you wouldn't know it until now. We got a lot of good questions today, so let's just start. This one comes from Kyle. Hey, guys, when will every franchise have a World Series championship, and which will be the last to get one?

My guesses are 2041 and Milwaukee Brewers. P.S. Since you answered my last question, I upheld my promise of considering writing a review on iTunes. And since seeing Ben in real life at the Sabre seminar but being too starstruck to talk to him, I finally did write a review on iTunes. Thank you, Kyle. So there are what?

There are eight teams with that one? Yeah, I'm regretting. I intended before this recording, I intended to get a random number generator out and see how long it would take. I was thinking that too, right? Because, yeah, because a very long time, right? Certainly, certainly I would not expect it to happen within 29 years. No. I mean, there's eight teams. I wouldn't take any eight random teams and say that those eight are likely to

win it in the next 29 or whatever years. Right. But these, these eight teams are not chosen randomly. They are chosen partially because they have, uh, either. Well,

because maybe, you know, arguably they have institutional disadvantages or at least they don't have glaring advantages that like boston and new york teams have so it's by the way it's the the rays rockies mariners rangers nationals padres brewers and astros this does get to a question that i i one when i started writing about baseball one of the very first article ideas i had and i never have followed through on it, and every new job I've moved to or every time I've switched computers or whatever, I've carried over this on my list of articles that I want to get to someday. whether it was likely that the Royals, this was probably 2009 or so when I had this idea,

that the Royals would ever win a World Series title, that the Royals fans, if they lived long enough, would ever get to see it. And that seems like, well, sure, in an infinite timeline, everything will happen. But of course, it's not infinite. There will come a day when Major League Baseball no longer exists. There will come a day when Major League Baseball no longer exists. And so I wanted to sort of mix a whole bunch of different expert sources to try to figure out how long Major League Baseball is likely to be a going concern and how likely it is that the Royals will win a World Series in that timeline. Using a combination of probabilities and sort of organizational strength or whatever. And I never got to it, but this is kind of what this question gets to. Of course, at the basic level, we are completely incapable of predicting who is going to be a favorite probably four years out, five years out. It becomes completely random probably beyond five years.

You could do it based on market size or something and maybe that would be fairly stable. You could, but you couldn't do it based on general manager or even really, for the most part, you couldn't even really do it based on, you know, farm system or anything like that. I mean, there's that suggested, suggested, but basically not. Um, so, uh, you know, any guesses that we pick for any individual teams would be useless right yeah but you know the it seems like it seems like the the rangers and the nationals are in good places and probably will be for a while yeah i think astros i mean maybe i thought

his his pick of the brewers was as reasonable a pick as any just because they aren't in a great spot right now competitively and they're just a tiny market, small, lower payroll end of the spectrum. So that seems like a reasonable one. But I mean it seems like the odds are against there ever being a time when every franchise has won, right? Because new franchises will be added. against there ever being a time when every franchise has won, right? I mean it – Because new franchises will be added. Yeah, contraction or expansion or something will change before every one of these wins one, I would think. What do you think are –

You could just freeze it and say, well, of the current 30 teams, when will the last one of them win? But I wonder even whether the odds that that all that all eight of the remaining ones that haven't won i wonder whether the odds are in favor of all eight of those winning one before one of them disappears somehow well uh if they move it would still carry over yeah right so they would have to be contracted. And so far, it's been a very long time since a baseball organization ceased to exist, like more than a century. Right. And I don't know how likely it is. It seems fairly unlikely. It seems like a

baseball organization is a billion dollar value and there's always a city that's going to be clamoring for that. So my guess is that we're not probably in danger at this point of having any organization cease to exist. I do think that between the Rays, the Brewers and the Padres, there's a pretty good chance that one would move before winning it. And I don't know which of those three. I mean, I guess the smart money would be on the raise, right?

Yes, probably. But yeah, I guess what we're agreeing is that there is probably currently a baseball city that will never get to hoist a flag. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. So if we want to put a year on the current 30 franchises and the eight that haven't won, do we want to even hazard a guess? I guess, you know, right now there's one team with a drought longer than 60 plus years. And I would guess that the odds are not good that one of our eight would be the outlier drought team. But on the other hand, I think 29 is far too short.

So I would guess something like 2070, I'd feel okay although there's a lot more teams now the drought yeah there's 30 teams there used to be 16 so now I'm going to adjust quite a bit upward I'm going to say

that this would be very easy to figure out mathematically but I will guess that it does not happen within the century. Everyone who's listening to this podcast will be dead. Well, I meant the end of this current century, so no. Okay. But if you want me to say within a century, I think that a person who's listening to this podcast will live to 120.

Yeah, that seems reasonable. Sure. So, yeah, no. I think that somebody listening to this podcast will celebrate the World Series Championships of the Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners, Colorado Rockies, and Tampa Bay Rays. But only one. Only one. I hope when that happens, and Tampa Bay Rays. But only one. Only one. I hope when that happens that person thinks of us.

They better review us on iTunes. You owe us. Yes, right. When that happens, you owe us an iTunes review. Hopefully the archives will still be available. Okay, next question comes from... Do you want to just for fun, do you want to pick the team you think will be last? I think the Brewers makes the most sense. Sure.

I say the Brewers. Okay. All right. Next question comes from Eli in Manchester, Connecticut. Sam and Ben, if you two could use Kickstarter to make an improvement to Major League Baseball, what would your Kickstarter project be for? I like this question. Do you have one?

Well, sort of. I changed it a little bit. I couldn't really think of a Kickstarter that would make a direct improvement to the game on the field. I mean, I don't know whether you would need a Kickstarter for that just because I, I mean, major league baseball has a lot of money. Uh, the thing that, that came to mind for me was things that we could do in the baseball community, um, kind of outside the industry to, to improve, uh, the information available to us and, and our analysis and experience of the game. And I think a cool Kickstarter would be if we were to fund big, time-intensive data collection projects that a lot of teams currently do with an army of interns or just with data that they have access to that we

don't. But, you know, if we wanted to, I guess a few years ago, there was something like this. I think it was organized by MGL, Mitchell Lichman, and possibly John Duan, where it was like a precursor to Baseball Inflow Solutions hang time data where they just paid people a certain amount per hour to do batted ball hang times on outfield fly balls just to improve a defensive metric. And I participated in that and it was very boring, but presumably it helped someone. So I feel like we could do this sort of thing if we wanted to with, you know, home to first times or catcher pop times or catcher throwing accuracy or fielder outfielder throws. All of those sort of things that some teams have access to and some teams have have quantified. We we could do that if we wanted to.

If we wanted to to put up the money I almost, as I was thinking of this, I almost just wanted to write up the thing myself and do it because it would be cool. So that was what came to mind for me. Mine were more along the lines of data generation. I would say data, data production. One is, and I've said this, I think once on this podcast and I said it once in a chat, it's kind of a an ongoing thing that I desire it's one of those 360 cameras that you can control

I want to have those all over the field I basically want to be able to go back in time and watch any play from any angle and look at any fielder from any angle. And they have these cameras that are quite capable of doing that. I don't know where you would put them to make them non-disruptive in the field, but I basically want to be able to, on any play, go back and look at the left fielder and see what he's doing. And I think that there's analytical value to that. However, I don't anticipate using it for analysis. I anticipate using it for entertainment

and for writing. But it would create a tremendous amount of, if not exactly data, a lot of anecdote. And the other thing that I would want is, and this is more realistic, I think, is to somehow pay to have basically every game that MLB has in any archive anywhere put on the internet for watching for MLB.TV subscribers. I assume they have thousands and thousands and thousands. Like I would assume that the entire 1992 season survives. And I would like to have all those, every single one of them, all of them online all the time. Good one. Very good one.

People can send us suggestions for things that they would like to see, or they can just... Or money. Yeah. Or money. We don't have a Kickstarter account, but we have an address. We'll use it responsibly. Okay, this question comes from John. It's another one about the Brewers. I'm a fan of a team most people aren't talking about right now, but we are, quite rightly, because they are awful, the Brewers. I'm a fan of a team most people aren't talking about right now, but we are, quite rightly because they are awful, the Brewers. But that has me thinking about the question of how much I should

want the Brewers to win. Basically, for non-playoff teams, is the added revenue that comes from each win a bigger deal, or is a higher draft pick more important? Do you philosophically, do you have any thoughts about just the idea of rooting against your team in a lost season like like it let's start just before we talk answer this question let's start with the premise like let's just pretend this was the nba and there was a real advantage um oh i i assume there's an advantage in the nba i honestly don't know uh what if if there was a real advantage would you be able to do it? You don't root for anybody anymore. Yeah, not really.

I don't think I could do it really convincingly. I think I could do it kind of intellectually, abstractly where it wouldn't really bother me if they lost but if I were really rooting for a team and they were trying to come from behind and had a rally started or something I'd probably just want them to win. I tried one time. I don't remember the context.

I don't know if it was about a draft pick thing or if it was something else. But for some reason, I had a self-interest in rooting against the team that I normally root for. And the effect was that I realized how pointless rooting is. For the first time in my life, it became clear to me that I did not actually have a role in the game and that my rooting, which felt important all along, was actually just nothing but like into the void. And so like it takes a tremendous amount of delusion to cheer for a team.

And I lost that delusion when it got too calculated. But anyway, all right, so that's the philosophy. My thinking on this is that there's no real benefit to rooting against your team to get a higher draft pick in baseball. Even really, you know, I guess that there's maybe a little bit if you're the number two team or the number three team and you might get the number one. I mean, there's been shown to be a real advantage getting the number one pick. And particularly if you're a fan, you're likely to know the guy

who's going to go number one in a lot of years, but you're not going to know the guys who go two and three. And so just from an enjoyment factor or an anticipation factor, you're quite likely – it's very easy to fixate on that guy. I remember a friend i was a padres fan during the strasbourg year and they i think the padres ended up with the third pick that they used on donovan tate um and they were in the running for strasbourg and that seemed fairly rational but that's a very rare occurrence though i think that the the exception though

uh is that there is a real value to having the 10th pick instead of the 11th. Because it's protected. Because it's protected. And if you're the 11th worst team in baseball, you're actually close enough to competing that you might actually want that free agent. If you're the 26th best team, you're not really. You're not going to get a free agent. But if you're 9, 10, 11, 12, that's a team that could conceivably see itself as being a contender especially when you look at teams like you know the Giants and the Phillies and the Angels this year um so I would say that if I were the 11th

uh if I had if I was if my team was in line to get the 11th pick maybe the 12th uh I would spend the last week of the season actively rooting against them. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. Offhand, I don't really know whether the Brewers are on one of those bubbles, but probably maybe the second one. So yeah, I guess if you're on the verge of one of those spots, then it makes sense. Otherwise, probably not worth rooting for. Okay, Daryl asks, do you think batting average with runners in scoring position could be to a team what BABIP is to a player? That is, could it be an indication that they may be playing or scoring runs above or

below their true talent level? I'm thinking specifically of the Cardinals' unusually high batting average with runners in scoring position and Pirates' unusually low this season? Or do you think that a team like the Cardinals may be doing something as a group that allows them to somehow sustain that high batting average with runners in scoring position? The Brewers currently are in line to have the fifth pick, but the difference between the fifth and the tenth right now is like a game and a half. Yeah. Okay, so this question,

the answer I guess is yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's the, it is the closest equivalent to it. Yeah. Uh, there's not really any consistency in, in this embedding average with runners and scoring position from year to year. Uh, the Cardinals entering Tuesday's game were hitting an incredible.329 in those situations. The next highest team, the Tigers, are at.286. And then the lowest were the Cubs at.222 and the Pirates at.224. Obviously, the Cardinals and the Tigers are just good offensive teams,

so you would expect them to hit better than average in those situations, but not by that much. So, so yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are, there are certain types of players who tend to like perform better in clutch

situations. It's like, it's like lefties or something. You take advantage of the of the whole the lack of shift yeah right uh so it's not actually clutchness so much as it is just a inherent advantage of those types of players and maybe certain teams could have more of those types of players so that would be sort of real but uh otherwise, yeah, it's a pretty good team level analog for Babbitt. And that's why smart people go beyond run differential in evaluating teams and why I should.

Okay, I kind of like this question from Izzy. Hypothetically, let's say there was a pitcher who only had one pitch, a four-seam fastball with average movement. However, this pitcher had impeccable command and could literally put the ball wherever he wanted. How hard would this pitcher need to throw to make the majors? How hard would he need to throw to be an average MLB pitcher? How about in order to be the best pitcher in baseball? The first question, do you think the first question is different than how hard

would he have to throw in order to be good enough to make the majors? A pitcher who only threw one pitch and it was a straight fastball. Let's say the answer is he could be a replacement level pitcher throwing, I'll just throw this out there, 81. Do you think that guy would actually get a chance? Like he'd be good enough to be a replacement level, but do you think that guy would ever get even past double A? No. I mean, there'd be just, it would be so hard for him to convince any scout or anybody in the organization to continue promoting him. I mean, the results would have to be completely lights out at every level to get a promotion.

I mean, if he only has one pitch and it's a four-seam fastball with average movement, then he's going to have to throw really, really hard to get a shot. I mean, it's probably the most important one pitch you could have is a four-seam fastball with perfect control. I mean, that gets you a lot of the way. But to have absolutely nothing to play off of that pitch, But to have absolutely nothing to play off of that pitch, I mean, just to make it, I feel like, I don't know. I feel like just to make it, you'd need to be like a triple digit guy. Well, okay.

So, I mean, this is what I'm saying, though, is when you say make it, do you mean be good enough or actually make it uh like do we need to draw a distinction there well i feel like you could have i mean if you i don't know if you had a guy who threw 105 or something and he was going to set a record but wasn't actually a good pitcher um i feel like maybe some team would just call him up in September and just let him throw 105, and people would come out in ooh and ah over that? You're saying 105, though. I'm imagining a guy who's throwing 83. I think that the answer to a replacement level... I think the... Yeah, go ahead.

So, do you think a guy who throws 83 would ever be anywhere close to consideration, if that's all he has? I mean... I don't think ever be anywhere close to consideration if that's all he has i mean for i don't think he would be close to consider like he doesn't get anywhere close no but i think that he might actually be good enough to be replacement level uh that's where i'm drawing the distinction i i i i my guess is that if he could actually put it exactly where he wanted, like not miss by even an inch, that, yeah, I think a guy who threw 83 and had perfect command, I think he could be replacement level. Okay, so in that case, then you would say that a guy who does that and throws, like, what, 90 could be a good pitcher? I don't know if I would say 90, but I would say 92 would be good.

And I would say 98 could be the best pitcher in the game. Huh. Yeah, I don't know. My initial thought was that it would have to be, like, the fastest fastball ever for him to, to be good. But I could be wrong about that. I don't know. It is, it is the most, I mean, just a pitch that's moderately hard and can be placed perfectly would be really effective. I mean, even if it doesn't have, I don't know, I mean, I guess Rivera is the comparison who has about as close to perfect control as any pitcher does. And this theoretical

pitcher would have better control than Rivera or better command than Rivera. So if he has better command than Rivera and he has a pitch that's, say, the same speed, I don't know. It's just that Rivera is a one-inning-at-a-time guy. So we're talking about best pitcher in baseball. That's a starter who can go through a lineup a few times. Yeah, well, this guy's not really going to be at any more of a disadvantage after four times through the lineup than he is the first time he's only got one pitch and it's not deceptive in the first place. He's, he's going to be good because it's hard to guess location.

And if, you know, I mean, I think that, I think that, um, I don't know this, but I think that location is more deceptive than different pitches. I would rather have a guy who could command to all four corners than a guy who had four different pitches, personally. Now, what worries me is that it's not a four-seamer with a lot of movement. So we're not talking Kenley Jansen or anything like that. That somewhat worries me. But i'm just imagining that well and it also worries me to some degree that it it is uh not going to be a swing and miss pitch so basically you take out

all the walks this guy never walks anybody doesn't strike out many guys but he does strike out some and then you're left with with babbitt right and you just hope that not too many of those balls go over the fence but i mean you know come on nobody can hit a pitch that is a pitch that is at the low and inside at any of the four corners it's really hard to hit i mean those are hard pitches to hit and if you don't even know which corner it's going to i just don't think guys would have that much success against that pitcher now if he if he's throwing 83, they'd have quite a bit of success. I'm putting that at replacement level. But if he's throwing 92?

Yeah. I mean, the cliche saying is that Major League batters can time any speed and that you can't just have a really good fastball and survive on that alone, that you have to have something to go with it and make it play up, but that is in the universe in which pitchers don't have perfect command, so it doesn't really apply. Or really anything close to perfect command. Like pitchers don't even have good command. Right.

Yeah. Particularly. Yeah, I don't know have a good command. Right. Yeah. Particularly. Yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting question. Thought-provoking, Izzy. We got a lot of other good questions this week, but we're not going to answer them now. Maybe we'll answer via email or get to them in future episodes. So you can send us some more for next time at podcast at baseball

prospectus.com. A reminder to join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and do what Kyle did and rate and review us on iTunes. We will be back tomorrow.