Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 271: Disciplining Puig/Trade Deadline Do-Overs/Mistaken Sabermetric Assumptions

Episode Date: August 22, 2013

Ben, Sam, and guest co-host Russell Carleton discuss whether and how the Dodgers should discipline Yasiel Puig, teams that would want to take mulligans on their trade deadlines, and things sabermetricians are still getting wrong.

How's it looking? When's it supposed to be? Well, my wife just went to bed and she came down and she said, yeah, probably won't be tonight. But I don't know. Wait, probably tonight or probably not? Probably won't be tonight. Oh, okay. But then again, we could get in the middle of the podcast and be like, guys, gotta go. It would be the first effectively wild child.

I would, you know what, I would, even though it's a girl, I would name her Ben Sam Carlton. I mean, you would wait till the end of the episode though, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, it would just be, you know, in the middle of you guys talking about whatever, it would just be push, push. Yeah, right. Okay. Well, it might be the first time I ever got the podcast to be as short as I would actually like it to be.

Good morning, and welcome to episode 271 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller, and for the first time by Russell Carlton, whom we have mentioned on the show many times and have somehow never had on, although it feels like we have because he's the person who corrects us via email or comment or instant message when we say something stupid, which is fairly often.

And now I'll just get to do it live and in person. Right, yeah, so this will save time for everyone so welcome he also yeah he i would say he also uh is the one person who when we raise uh difficult to research questions actually does the difficult research yes and he is also the person if i don't have a topic and it's only a few minutes until recording i simply go and look at the last thing he wrote and talk about it because it's always worth talking about oh sam you're such a sweetheart and uh russell is on the verge of acquiring his third daughter uh it could happen at any moment we are hoping that it won't happen during this podcast but he has he has agreed not to take his wife uh to the hospital if she should require that until the podcast is over.

So she will have to wait if that were to occur. Sweetie, did you hear that? You got to wait. Okay, so we're just doing a regular show except Russell is here. So we have topics. What topics do you guys have? So we have topics. What topics do you guys have? Well, my topic is the team that we think now three weeks out wants a mulligan on what they did at the trade deadline. Okay, my topic is hard to describe. Try.

Try it for us. I guess it's assumptions that we think will be overturned. Huh. Or something. I don't know. Very meta, but okay. Okay. And my topic is about teams disciplining their own players. And it's going to give Russell an opportunity to talk about things that I think he knows more about than we do.

So who wants to go first? Not me. Okay. Well, all right. Mine might be kind of long. We'll see. So mine, Russell, I don't know if you've been on the internet lately, but there have been a lot of one-sentence paragraphs written over the last couple days. Not just hot takes, but really blistering takes about Yasiel Puig. Who's that? We should have done some prep before this episode. prep before this episode. So Yasiel Puig is an excellent player, has been very valuable to the Dodgers, but seems to do these things that people aren't happy about, whether it's his attitude or his occasional lack of fundamentals. And lately, it seems like there's been a lot of focus on this because, I don't know, I guess now the Dodgers playoff spot is almost assured.

So now people are turning their attention to October. And there's this idea that Yasiel Puig is somehow this very combustible force in October. Like he's somehow going to cost the Dodgers lots and lots of wins through, you know, overthrowing the cutoff man or yelling at an umpire or not running something out. Bill Plaschke wrote, Puig's antics are the sort that will cost the team in a close game in October. For every playoff game that Puig wins with his bold arm or crazy legs, he could cost them too. That's a lot of statements which I suppose he could, but he could also, you know, win them two because he's good at baseball. No, no, no. Ben, if he wins them two, he loses them four. Do you not understand? This is dangerous, Ben. The more he wins, the worse it is.

Right, right. Okay. Okay. don't even get me started on three so basically it's better if he's just benched uh because he can't he can't do double the harm well if he loses if he just lose if he starts by losing them one then i believe that he might never mind go yeah uh so Yeah. So I can understand on one hand why you would want to correct these flaws in a player. There's no reason why you wouldn't want him to hit the cutoff man or, you know, not anger an umpire. Those are legitimate things to want. But over the last couple of days, there's been this sort of discussion of what the Dodgers should do here. And it's kind of made me think of, Russell, your background in child psychology. Because the way that people have kind of framed this is as if Puig has to be disciplined or taught a lesson.

He has to be given a timeout of some sort. And so he was kind of unofficially benched the other night, and then he was put into the game as a defensive replacement and hit a home run because he's good at baseball. And so this was seen as kind of like a wishy-washy discipline, like an ineffectual parent who gives their kid a timeout, but then the kid cries and they say, okay, it's over. And then the discipline doesn't count or something. So we don't have to talk about Puig specifically because we don't know the ins and outs of Puig's psychology.

But I wonder kind of what you think the best approach is for a team in this situation. You've written a lot about how players develop and how you're not fully mature and your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed until you're 25 and Puig is 22. frontal cortex is not fully formed until you're 25 and Puig is 22. So is there anything that you can do for a player who's having these kind of problems? Or if there is, what's the best approach to go about it without alienating him further? Boy, the thing about that is that, you know, presumably the Dodgers have tried stuff behind the scenes. And I mean there was the – I was listening to – there was reports of Don Mattingly just having a little sit down with them. And I bet you that they seem to have tried everything, every which way that they can do it. Nothing quite seems to work.

Nothing quite seems to work. And to be very honest with you, it's tempting to think that, oh, we should just find – we should put him in a longer timeout or we should send him to bed without dinner or something like that. And I mean just kind of being the dad of a four-year-old myself, it's, it's, it's one of those things that, uh, um, you can, you can do the discipline all, all you want. And, and, um, sometimes it just takes a long time to extinguish the behaviors that you're trying to get to. And especially with a 22 year old kid, who's, um, you know, I, I got to imagine, and with people talk about, you know, he came from Cuba, it's a whole new world and just a lot of the stuff that's kind of going on in his head. And I wonder if he's just kind of had a chance in his own head to kind of get himself settled to this is where I am and this is what I'm doing. And then on top of him being 22 and him being – imagine, just think of what you guys were doing when you were 22.

you know you can imagine just think of what you guys were doing when you were 22 um and uh some of the you know you don't have to cop to it but some of the crazy stuff you might have gotten up to um so you know there's there's a lot of stuff going on it's it's so tempting to think hey you know we just need to um we just need to set them down or have somebody talk to them it's just not that simple behavior change change takes a long time. And, you know, we're really talking about a guy who's been up in the major leagues for what, two, three months, something like that. When did he come up? Uh, was it beginning of June? Yeah, that sounds right. So, so, you know, he's been up for three months and you know, that that's what, 90 days. And that's, um, in the, you know, in the, in the behavioral the behavioral literature, it generally takes about six months when somebody is willing to work on something.

Yeah, go ahead. nicely to introduce this but i mean frankly nobody takes plaschke seriously um and you know what i don't think he takes himself all that seriously or maybe he takes himself too seriously but i mean nobody thinks that that puig is really in like a uh you know that the every game he wins he's gonna lose them too uh you know nobody really thinks that's true i mean clearly i think everybody acknowledges that in the short term puig makes the dodgers better if he runs into a few outs or if he, you know, is kind of brash and loud. Can I quote another hot take? Scott Miller, CBS Sports. This is the lead. This is the lead. You can see it coming from here to the autumn leaves. Coming from here to the autumn leaves. Crowd screaming, national television cameras blazing.

Game four or five or six of the playoffs, and Yasiel Puig runs into an out, overthrows a cutoff man, commits some egregious mistake that cost the Dodgers the game, maybe even cost them the playoffs. And then in this scenario, the Dodgers go home for the winter, and Puig jets off to join a South beach Congo line for the winter. All right. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to adjust my objection to your framing. I mean, first off, just to, to, I mean, clearly like it's not as though, uh, getting thrown out on the bases is an intangible, like that's actually a very tangible thing that we can measure as part

of his performance. And he's been reckless on the base pads for sure. And yet we have a pretty good sense of what his, his, his total value is as a player. So, you know, they can handle that. But I mean,

the point I was going to make is just that the short term fears are, are kind of nonsense. They're just for, I would say they're just for hot takes. The longterm development seems to be significant, right? I mean, they've got a guy who. The long-term development seems to be significant, right? I mean, they've got a guy who's going to be worth somewhere between probably three wins and, I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 wins in the next six years.

And, you know, there's a real incentive for them to get that up to 30 or 40. And if you worry that he's getting into bad habits, that he's going to perform worse if he's, you know, hated or reckless or, I mean, I'm really not thinking about the overthrowing the cutoff man. I'm thinking more along the lines of just, you know, what we see fame do to young players from time to time. And that's a significant thing. So the question is how do you, you know, how do you do that in a long-term way? I don't really know the answer to that, but my sense has always been that once a person gets to a certain age, like once they turn 13 or 14, until they're about 25, the key

is just to keep them from destroying themselves. The key is just to keep them from crashing into a tree or something. You want to make sure that they are safe and all that, but they'll eventually come out of it on their own and end up being adults. Most people end up being the adults they were always going to be. From the daughter's perspective, it seems like you just ride this out and you don't over always going to be. And so from the Dodgers' perspective, it seems like you just kind of ride this out and you don't overreact to it. And if you don't make too big a deal out of it, then he'll emerge from this in three or four years like a normal ball player, and probably nobody will hold it all that much against him, I would think.

I don't know. I'm wondering, though, if we're kind of conflating two different things here. One is how many 22-year- there have have have poor fundamental skills? You know, how many? And there's a lot of those guys out there. And, you know, Puig's a hell of an athlete. And he's now he's he's up at the major league level. And it's it's all raw tools. And he's he needs some refinement. And that's that's fine. tools and he needs some refinement and that's fine. So, you know, that kind of thing can be taught, but we're also kind of conflating the fact that he's, and I'll be generous and say, a little tone deaf to the way in which his behavior kind of comes off in the media. And, you know, I think that people are kind of conflating. Let's say that he was, you know, just a 22-year-old toolsy guy that needed to learn some stuff, but he was kind of quiet and demure. Do you think we'd be having this conversation?

Oh, no. Yeah, not at all. To me, overthrowing the cutoff man is a non-issue. It's just, you know... I mean, Bryce Harper was pretty reckless, too. I think one of the things about how quickly both of those guys made it to the majors is they didn't get to play against triple and double- competition and sort of learn, you know, slowly how good these guys are. They went from basically playing against high schoolers to playing against big leaguers. It's a different speed and they're

playing at a different speed. That seems totally reasonable and not a moral failing in the least. But it seems that all of the Puig, you know, backlash that's happened, there was the Puig mania, there was this guy turned around the Dodgers, and then there became, now it's the Puig backlash. And I mean, what, he's like the second most hated guy next to A-Rod right now. Yeah, I should mention that we, I don't know how many outs he's running into, but we have him as a… Like a plus eight or something yeah we have him as a positive value base runner also so even even even the thing that he's apparently reckless and bad at he's he's good at um so i want to i mean is there a is there a danger with the kind of one size fits all discipline model of the major leagues where when someone does one of these things, the standard response

is to bench him, either pull him out of the game or not start him. And in a way, just sort of publicly embarrass him in a way, or at least it could be taken that way. And I wonder, I mean, certain types of discipline must be more effective than others with certain people right and players are people and so is there a is there a danger that you know if you bench a guy or pull him out of the game then you're actually doing more damage you're creating resentment whereas if you left him in the game but you sat him down and had a private talk that would be more effective for a particular player well i get the feeling that they probably like i said they probably tried all of them yes and and that's but you know there is you said the words

one size fits all and and and one size fits all anything is a bad idea when you're trying to change someone's behavior you kind of got to get inside and figure out what makes the guy tick. And, you know, publicly embarrassing him, you know, might be just the most horrible thing you can do. And he might resent you for that. And, you know, maybe he would respond better to something private. Or, you know, maybe he's just, you know, we just haven't figured out what might reach him, you know. Maybe you need to do what I do with my four-year-old. I give her two choices, and both of them are acceptable to me. I let her pick which one she wants, and that way she feels in control. Now, Yassiel, you can either hit the cutoff man, or you can hit the other cutoff man.

I don't know what that would would be but um but you could either one's fine with me i'm okay with that but uh that might be you might you might just need to kind of dip back and uh uh pull something out of uh out of the parenting handbook i guess it's interesting how uh puig doesn't seem to be hated at all by fans. This seems to really be a media and kind of baseball men kind of controversy. He's a rebel without a cause. He really is. He's a renegade. He's an outlaw.

And it seems like it's to some degree burnished his credentials as a phenomenon. Yeah. Sure. Bill Hanstock just tweeted something that I'm going to clean up just a little bit, but he says, I hope Tweed goes to the World Series and pulls this thing out while Joe Buck is interviewing him. And scene.

Are we done with that topic then? Yeah. That's a good way to close. Let's do wrestles. Okay, so my topic was the team that you think most wants a mulligan

on what they did at the trade deadline, whether it's something they did or they did not do. Since I thought of it, i'll throw mine out there and i i know that um i was looking back at the the chase at least situation which i know you guys have had talked about before um because i listen every day and i'm such a big fan thank you for having me on i i don't know. I just had a point of interest. But anyway, the Chase Sutley thing, I'm sitting there and thinking, boy, it seems like everybody in baseball screwed this up because the Phillies couldn't have gotten something for the guy.

I mean, whether it was Kansas City would make sense. Orioles would make sense. I could make a case for the Rays or somebody like that. Move Ben Zobris somewhere else. One of the other 15 positions he plays. You could see something along those lines. I have to wonder, Chase could have gone and had a nice little vacation somewhere in a two-month vacation in the city, gone to the playoffs,

and then come back and sign the same extension he did a couple of weeks ago or last week, something like that. And so there's that. The Phillies seem to be dead set on signing him when they could have gotten, again, something for him, which is better than nothing. And then they went and they signed him in in august kind of taking away the leverage they might have had to play around with oh you know we might trade you at the august waiver trade deadline you know you think of you put uh um you put chase utley on some of those teams that i

mentioned and they're right in the thick of it. And that would be, and he's what the, I think I looked up, he's like 25th best player in the league by Vorpice, despite the fact that he missed, what, a month and a half. Why weren't there teams that were dangling a little bit more in front of the Phillies and saying, hey, you know, we understand you might want to get him back, and that's cool with us, but we'll rent, and then the Phillies could have played a little betting war there.

We sort of talked about whether, I don't think it was in regards to Utley, maybe it was, I don't think it was, but we talked about whether... Soriano and Utley, maybe. Yeah, why teams don't trade the guys that they want to re-sign more, how much that matters in their hopes of re-signing. And the timing of the Utley thing,

I mean, we don't know what the conversations are like, but it sort of feels like the timing of the signing, they might have benefited from not trading it. It might have been the case that they made the first move and they basically demonstrated their loyalty to him if he didn't want to be traded. It was like a week later that they signed him. I don't know. It's also possible that they knew they were closing in on him, although I't remember i think we i think i heard the tiktok a little bit um but i mean yeah clearly utley had big value to to somebody um and the phillies weren't going anywhere i think teams really uh are hesitant to give up possession of a player

like you know that old saying possession is whatever tense of the law intense of the law yeah yeah i mean it it really does feel like like oh yeah, you have this great plan in mind, like you're going to trade him, but you still have a relationship with him, you can have conversations with him before you trade him and let him know that you're real. But as soon as he goes somewhere else, those conversations kind of fade away a little bit. It's sort of best not to lend things to people because people are terrible. They just take your stuff or they scratch it. The thing that I thought was like the teams that made most sense, Kansas City, Oakland, Tampa Bay, Chase Utley is going to go and after –

Oh, right, yeah. He's not going to sign with Oakland. Right. How many years in Philadelphia and he's going to go to Oakland and be like, dude, dude, dude. I got to stay here. like, dude, dude, dude, you know, I got to stay here. And, you know, I mean, so there's, you know, there's, there's that aspect of it. And I don't know, maybe it's, I have to wonder at what price, uh, there's loyalty and there's, you know, I know he's iconic and, you know, he's been with the team for 10 years and he's, he's got all that going, but, um going. But I have to wonder at what price loyalty

comes at and especially if it just would be kind of a rental slash here we'll lend you Chase Utley for a couple of months. I guess if you believe that the Phillies got a super good deal on Utley, it changes the conversation a little bit. I think that I initially thought that they had got a super good deal on Utley, it changes the conversation a little bit. I think that I initially thought that they had gotten a super good deal on him, and then the vesting options were so complicated that I actually couldn't tell. I couldn't figure it out. They're so complicated that there are years where an injury seems to actually help the Phillies because then they get a really good option on them for the next year and then there are some years where an injury hurts them and it's hard to tell. So I don't know if they made all that profit on Utley in re-signing

him but I don't know, I kind of sense they did. I sort of feel like, you know, yeah, they could have gotten more. They had this wonderful asset that like you say, a lot of teams could have paid for but you know, you got to win the pots that you're ahead in. And they ended up making, I would say, a little bit of profit on the situation and probably don't regret where they are. I don't know. You're probably right. You're probably right.

I don't know. Well, that is my job to tell you guys you're wrong. So since I'm live on the air, you're wrong. It's my job to tell you guys you're wrong, so since I'm live on the air, you're wrong. I guess my pick would probably be the Pirates, just for kind of not doing anything. I wanted them... Yeah, but they've actually solidified their... I mean, nothing has changed about the Pirates, right? I mean, you have the same gripe that you had at the time,

but it's not like they've fallen out of the division race or anything. I mean, they've actually got... I mean, they're 9-10 since the deadline. They're a game over 500 since the beginning of July. And we... I mean, it was kind of evident that they weren't quite as good as they were over the first three months of the season. Still a good team, but it seemed like they were kind of playing over their heads a little

bit and were going to come back to the pack and that they would be battling the Cardinals and the Reds for the rest of the year. And now they have, let's see, they lost tonight. I think this is updated. They're a game ahead of the Cardinals. They're two and a half games ahead of Cincinnati. So, you know, this just seems like it would have been a good time for them to, they have a lot of prospects.

They could have done something without completely killing their system. And it just seems especially important for them, And it just seems especially important for them, given the last two decades of failure, to get into the playoffs and actually win the division instead of having to play a wildcard game and possibly being out immediately after that. I don't know what exactly they should have done. They clearly were trying to do things right up until the end. They were trying to trade for Stanton and other outfielders. And you can point to guys who've been traded since, like Rios and De Jesus. And those guys, I mean, realistically, they probably aren't huge upgrades over the players they're playing currently. I mean, Tabata has really been just about as good as those guys. But, you know, they're playing Garrett Jones and Andrew Lambeau, and it just seems like there's something that could have been done there.

They had a lot of incentive to do something. So that's what I would have liked to see. And I don't exactly have an answer, but I kind of do. So the Rangers were a buyer. They got Garza. And then as the deadline approached, they had fallen so far behind the A's that they were actually looking at becoming maybe a seller and Garza was available again. Like they were willing to trade Garza. They didn't end up doing that, but they were at least reportedly willing to do it. And then Adam Morris from Lone Star Ball seemed to be willing to just sell off everything that wasn't nailed down at that point.

He was almost like it seemed like giving up on the season. almost like it seemed like giving up on the season. And so since they didn't do it, they don't actually fit what you're asking for, Russell. But if they had that kind of mentality at the last day when they were five games, six games out of the division, they've gone 17-4 since then, and they're now up a game and a half. And so clearly, I guess, things change rapidly, and it would have been uh it would

have been regrettable i would say if they had traded garza um or really anything else but they kind of lucked out or whatever and didn't yeah actually one of the things i noticed you talked about things changing quickly do you remember at the deadline everybody was freaking out because yadier molina went on the DL right before then. And St. Louis was casting about for a catcher, anybody who could catch. And now you kind of look back at that and you're like, boy, that was a little overreaction there. I mean, he was out for a couple of weeks. And yeah, I mean, the guy's MVP caliber guy, but they survived.

What did the Royals do? Remind me what the Royals did. I forget what the guy's MVP caliber guy, but they survived. What did the Royals do? Remind me what the Royals did. I forget what the Royals did. Justin Maxwell. Oh, yeah, yeah. Jamie Carroll. Jamie Carroll. Yeah.

And I defended it. I defended the Royals not selling at the time because I thought that it was that the way that they are, it was worth hanging in for that sliver of a chance and they've kind of maintained that sliver of a chance it really hasn't gone away they're a long shot but they're like uh you know 1 in 30 1 in 40 something like that right now and I still kind of I still kind of feel like the Royals should keep chasing that 1 in 30 or 1 in 40 because they're the Royals and you know it's going to be all the sweeter if they pull off a miracle all right um so my topic is I was having a conversation with somebody today and the idea the idea of uh working a pitcher you know of like trying to get a pitcher's pitch count

uh high came up we were talking about sort of things that used to be came up, we were talking about sort of things that used to be like obviously accepted by stat heads and that now aren't. And that, so like one was, you know, catchers, the catcher's role in the pitcher, in the pitcher success was one of those things, right? Where five years ago or whatever, it was sort of dismissed as settled, statistically settled. And now it's obviously nothing of the sort. And so the pitch count thing came up where, you know, 10 years ago, it was just considered so obvious that you should get a pitcher's pitch count up and batters who could do it were considered very valuable for that reason. And now you look at it and every bullpen is so incredible. And you sort of think, well, actually, if you can kind of get that pitcher to go through the line

at the third time, you might actually be a lot better off. So anyway, that's just a way of getting to my question, which seems to be something that Russell probably has an answer for. I just want to know, in 10 years' time, what kind of accepted part of stat head orthodoxy we will have completely turned our back on or at least moved beyond oh um ass i'm trying to think of what what other ones we've i mean you think of i mean you think of things that have kind of gone by the wayside over the past 10 years and there was you know been the the there's been dips that

you know the kind of the strong form dips of there's no difference between pitchers and their ability to um to induce ground or to induce outs on balls and play. And, you know, the orthodoxy went from, yeah, yes, to, yeah, but, you know, there's more to it. And, gee, you know, I think that... Actually, the thing I think that we're going to do is that as data becomes more available available and whether that's field FX or somebody else, uh, you know, kickstarts a crowdfunded, uh, defensive, uh, thing that you

guys were talking about yesterday. Um, I, I wonder if we're going to, we're going to look back in 10 years and realize that we got defense all wrong. Um, and some of the, you know, some of the, the measurements that we have now on, um, kind of what the values that we were placing on things and, and guys that we were really overrating when, you know, it was more ballpark or it was more, um, you know, shifting or if it was positioning or something like that. And I think that we'll have a lot better understanding of defense in the next 10 years or so. And I wonder, I don't know how to get much more specific than that. Maybe it's just, you know, we think a guy is this amazing defender now,

but what we're really seeing is that, well, you know, he's got a quick reaction time but he's slow afoot or you know the other way around and we'll just have a more nuanced understanding of that that would be kind of a second reversal on defense i feel like almost i mean uh the whole money ball thing about how defense wasn't so important that we just wanted a bunch of sluggers. Um, and then that was kind of abandoned. I don't know whether that was,

I don't know whether defense was underrated or whether it was just deemed to be, uh, I don't know whether that just wasn't the area where teams thought there was a competitive advantage at that time or what, but, uh, we,

we kind of went through a period where suddenly all the the Sabre teams and Sabre people were talking up defense and maybe we're we're kind of still in that or the tail end of that a little bit so I guess that would be kind of a second sea change with the sabermetric standpoint on defense. I don't know. I'm trying to think of some other dubious things that we think. But you don't know they're dubious, Ben. Right, I know.

That's the point is they don't seem dubious to you. We don't know that we don't know them. Yeah. So, you know, there's that kind of philosophical quandary there. I'm kind of skeptical about the shift, I guess, or at least I'd like to see more evidence before I make up my mind about the shift. And maybe that's a sign that it doesn't qualify because we're not sure about it.

But I feel like some people are, are pretty sure about it, that it seems to be something that smart teams are doing and it makes sense. And, and maybe that's the case. But I just wonder, I feel like we, we don't have complete,

complete data on who's doing it and when and how much it's helping and whether hitters are changing their approach to counteract it at all like suddenly adam dunn is an opposite field hitter now uh after he decided that he was sick of hitting into the shift and over the last couple months he's going the other way and hitting 300 something um so i wonder whether it will prove to be a lasting thing or whether teams will develop shift countermeasures and sort of neutralize it and will go back to traditional alignments more. Yeah. The thing that you could end up with, though, is that if we had field or positioning data and we could construct some sort of measure on how well teams are positioned and then you could start getting into, well, who's doing the positioning? Is that the manager? Do we credit that to the catcher? Do we credit that to the analyst who's feeding data down into the dugout and how we talk a lot about how managers, how much they can affect the game and maybe that's our entree into some

of that and how a good manager can or whoever's in charge of fielding but um how how well they can how much they can affect the game all right is that enough stuff yeah yeah okay thanks for answering my question guys you're welcome thanks for the show sam you sam you are the show oh also you are the show. Oh, also, you are wrong. And me. I'm wrong, too. All right. So thank you for joining us. I'm sorry it took us so long to have you on.

It's very silly that it took 271 episodes. We wish you and your wife and your future daughter well. And you should all subscribe to Baseball Perspectives to read Russell's work and his column Baseball Therapy, which comes out every week and sometimes multiple times per week and is always an interesting read. So thank you, Russell. Oh, thanks for having me. All right.

So we will be back with one more show tomorrow.