Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 362: Emails About Baseball You Actually Sent Us

Episode Date: January 10, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about hiring GMs, a Hall of Fame-level LOOGY, restructuring divisions, and more.

I know the answers, I know the questions, and always thought that you did too. I know the answers, I know the questions, and always thought that you did too. I know the answers, I know the questions, and always thought that you did too. You were about to go. I was. I'm not a fool Oh, see, I should have done it. I was prepared. 362 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg, and it's Email Friday. Ben, how are you? Okay. Good. Excellent. Are you looking forward to the weekend, Ben?

Sure. All right. So the first question is... Oh, wait. Before we start, I wanted to clarify something that I meant to say yesterday, All right. So the first question is... it. I should have mentioned, as I did in the article I wrote after that, that we sort of need to convert those velocity readings because it's sort of on a different scale. I'm quoting from the preface to Dollar Sign on the Muscle, where Kevin Crane says, in 1981, when I was watching games with baseball scouts, most of the men using radar relied on a brand called the Ray Gun, which registered the speed of the ball as it crossed home plate,

and thus an 86 fastball was said to be the major league average. Today, almost all scouts use some variant of the Juggs Gun, which is not quite true, I don't think, but which registers the speed of the ball as soon as it leaves the pitcher's hand, and the difference is an added four to five miles per hour. So Maddox's 88 that we quoted in the velocity scale that we use now would be closer to 92 to 3. So that supports the idea that he had significantly better than average stuff as a young starter. Okay. Invalidates an awful lot of that episode. that he had significantly better than average stuff as a young starter.

Invalidates an awful lot of that episode. Yeah. In retrospect. A bit. Also, not only that, but I believe that atmospheric changes in the Earth have actually changed how much Frank Thomas weighs. Yeah, that's possible. Not as small, not as big a deal. Also, we have both noticed that we've gotten a lot of repeat listener emails,

presumably from people who have started listening to the show at some point other than the beginning. And so every time we get one of those, we have to try to remember when we talked about something, which is difficult. But I wouldn't recommend that you go back and listen to all of the old episodes. And Sam probably wouldn't even recommend that you listen to the new ones. But I would say that if you like the listener email shows specifically, you'd probably enjoy the old ones just about as much as the new ones because our answers tend to be timelessly stupid. I especially continue to love when we get an email that begins, you know, you'll probably never answer this.

It's such an insane question. But and then it's something that we've answered almost word for word. And I mean, it is a testament to something that, um, like for instance, two people have asked how baseball would be different if it was ran clockwise instead of counterclockwise. Yeah. And the second one could not believe that we would ever answer such a question. And we, I believe did two episodes on it. Yeah. So we get a lot of questions like almost every week.

I feel like we get a question about what if baseball were like soccer and it was relegation and the good teams were, like the bad teams were demoted to some other league or we get questions about loaning players all the time.

A lot of those. So we get a lot of questions about, we just had one this week, in fact, about what would happen if players had to play every position. Yes. Like some variation of that, like if there was forced rotation like in volleyball. Yeah. So, I mean, we... We love these.

Yes, we do. Do not censor yourself. If an idea occurs to you, send it. There is no cost to emailing. Yes. It's literally cost less than a dollar for us to get an email. However... I don't know how much an email costs.

You might enjoy going back and listening to the old listener email shows because most of our listener emails tend to be about things that are just as applicable or not applicable now as they ever were. Yeah, go ahead. We're going on. Okay, so Zach asks a question. Let's say you became in charge of baseball ops for a club. If all current general managers were available, how many of them would you prefer to hire before you went off the board and took your chances with someone who is not currently a GM? Did we do this one too?

Did we? Wait a minute. Did we? I think so. This is an older question. I stumbled upon this. Did I answer this question? I'm pretty sure we answered a version of this question. How long ago? A long time ago. Someone asking whether we take like CEOs instead of general managers or something. We did, but that's not what this is. We talked about – we did talk about whether – I believe that that question was whether you could hire everybody on earth.

If like Obama would be your GM, would you take him over Ned Colletti kind of a thing? And we were trying to decide whether you would take – whether know, whether a CEO of, you know, eBay or something would be a good GM. This is a different question. It's not so different, is it? Well, no, because this is imagining, like, let's say, you know, who's the guy you like? Say Matt Klintak is a guy I like. So let's say Matt Klintak is the guy I would hire if I had to hire a new GM. How many current GMs would I hire

before I hired Matt Klintak? Oh, so this is baseball industry only? Well, it's only the current GMs are being asked to be compared to, not all people in the game. So how many current GMs would you hire before you hired anybody who is not currently a GM? But that includes everyone, like Obama. Well, sure it does, but it also includes Matt Klintak, right? Yeah. It includes – Oh, okay. All right.

I presume he's not asking about Obama. Okay, sure. Okay. All right. So that changes things a little bit. I guess I would keep, I would choose to hire, oh, I don't know. I feel like probably the 30 people who are in charge of the 30 people who have those jobs now, probably at least 20 of them have the are the most are currently among the most qualified baseball people that have jobs. We're basically eliminating people who you can't hire and people who are currently are above GM. Like you can't hire you can't just go get Theo because Theo doesn't want to do that anymore. So yeah, of the, basically we're saying of the, you know, roughly 30 most qualified people

in the world, roughly 20 of them are currently in the position. Kind of. Sort of. That's kind of what we're saying yeah okay uh so you would hire 20 you would say really aren't we really saying uh how many people aren't we really talking about how many people in baseball currently are more qualified to be gms than yeah than current gms yes we are i think eventually you're gonna to understand this question. Maybe not this episode. Ben, I don't need to hear the name, but pick a name in your head. Just pick the guy you would hire if you had to hire a GM and you couldn't hire a current GM and you're limited to people who would actually take the job. You have a name in your head?

Larry David. I said don't say the name do you have a name in your head a baseball name in your head uh sure yes all right now how many current GM's are better than that guy hmm yeah probably like 15. Yeah, 15 seems about right. I would guess that the highest I would think that, you know, the name that I would come up with in my head, the highest I would probably put him is average.

Yeah, just because of the benefit of experience, probably. Yeah, probably. I guess my answer might be different if we were talking about a win now team versus a win much later team, maybe. But there's got to be an adjustment period whenever you see some GM interviewed about what he does differently now as opposed to what he did when he first got the job. He'll talk about all the things he's learned and how much more efficient he is. So there's a learning process there. So it's not saying that the best GM candidate couldn't be as good as the best current GM, but he just wouldn't be right away. Boy, that went poorly. That question went really badly. Yeah.

Boy, that went poorly. That question went really badly. Yeah. All right, next question is from Miles. What kind of statistics would a loogie have to post in order to be a legitimate candidate for the hall? I like this question. I thought you were laughing because we answered it already. No.

Good. No, but I like this one. I do too. So I feel like the... Kind of two different questions too. I mean this one. Um, so I feel like the kind of two different questions too. I mean, one question, if,

if you're asking to qualify for the hall by like kind of conventional win above replacement standards is one answer. And then likelihood of making it is, is much lower and is a different question. Yeah. Uh, to, to qualify by the standards that we tend to

to use i would say he would probably have to probably have to pitch at a high high loogie level for about 40 years if if not more um there's just i mean i guess if you were if you were the best loogie in the league every year for 20 years well mariano rivera for instance is the only reliever who's ever gotten into hall of fame level war uh territory and even he's a little low but you give him credit for postseason and and then he gets kind of over 60, which is sort of the standard. And nobody else is anywhere close. I mean, you're talking about most guys, the very best relievers are in the 20s and 30s, or really 20s and very low 30s. So basically, he would have to pitch like Mariano Rivera, and he's not going to

get the innings that Mariano Rivera is going to get, and he's also not going to get the leverage probably that Mariano Rivera is going to get. So he'd have to be better than Mariano Rivera. But Mariano Rivera is a first ballot guy, and there are inferior relievers who have made it and will make it probably. I would think that just as a simple answer, I would say a career with an era under one would do it yeah that might do it it's just uh it's so only might huh you think that i

mean i'm just looking at like i just think the aesthetic shock of seeing a zero point uh era like that just it's it's unthinkable it's never you know it's never happened just, it's unthinkable. It's never, you know, it's never happened. It's just incredible. I mean, to see, what have there been, 10 sub-one ERA seasons in history? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if you, I'm looking at Randy Choate's baseball reference page because he's the platonic ideal of a loogie in my head. spell reference page because he's the he's the platonic ideal of a loogie in my head and so his innings totals for the last few years go 36 44 24 38 35 uh so i mean even if he

even if he did that for 20 years it's 700 innings yeah i i yeah it's it's hard to imagine um any loogie either deserving to make it or making it i think unless he's just has unprecedented longevity and consistency and dominance which i guess i mean if you if you took a player who could be a great starter, like Randy Johnson, if you had made Randy Johnson a loogie, that presumably would have been the best that a loogie could be. He was pretty unhittable by left-handed hitters as a starter. And he pitched for 22 years. hitters as a starter so and he pitched for 22 years so if you had made randy johnson a loogie and he retired with a 3.3 era so let's say that if he had if he had been a loogie all these years he might have had a sub one era possibly um probably not but that's partly partly because it took him a long while you know a long time to get going. And different air.

But, yeah, I mean, I think that a sub-1 ERA does it, and anything higher doesn't. I think impossible. I mean, you'd have to have just such a narrative around you somehow develop otherwise, and I just don't think it's conceivable. I mean, you're not going to get the most you could get. So let's see. So Kevin Segrist, for instance, this year,

threw 40 innings with a.45 ERA, and his war was 1.9. So if you did that for 20 years, you'd still be shy of 60. And that's.45. That's the lowest ERA in history. Right. Which, by the way, Kevin Segrist has the lowest ERA for a season in history. Well, if you lower the innings minimum far enough.

Well, he had 40 innings, but yeah, of course, that's true. I like Kevin Segrist, though. You do like Kevin Segrist. So did we answer that? Sub-1 ERA? We're just going with that? Sub-1 ERA for 20-plus years, maybe. And won the World Series five times.

All right. I mean, of course, part of the problem is that you couldn't be a loogie at that level. You get used more. more, I think. I think it's almost inconceivable that a pitcher could be that good at retiring lefties and not be expanded beyond that role to some degree. I mean, if you can be that good reliably against lefties, you could probably be as good as Glenn Perkins overall, and you'd be a closer. All right, Michael, maybe a radical idea, but if the NL adopts the DH at some point,

what would be the purpose of separate leagues? I say the league should cease to exist. No more divisions. Top eight teams based on winning percentage make the playoffs, with every team playing each other five times. Tiebreaker is head-to-head record. And then second question in this premise is what about the all-star game uh so he's he's already accepting that we're on board with the

premise what about the all-star game who cares but i propose the host city elects two legends to draft teams after fan and player votes the nhl and nfl already do this for their all-star games. So what do you say? So two questions. Do you generally like the idea of having all these sort of divisions which create an artificial, like, you know, it kind of, well, basically, it keeps the best teams from getting rewarded and creates all these little micro races that don't actually help you find the best team but make things more interesting are you in favor of that or do you like the idea of having 30 teams just playing

against each other and the best teams win as you know if your goal is to find the best team that's certainly what you would do yeah I like the purity of the latter but it's sort of hard to imagine that the excitement level would be equivalent, and that ultimately is probably more important. I agree, but doesn't that worry you that you're in a position where you're saying that you like the flaws in the game because they're traditional?

Don't you realize that you're officially half dead at that point? Well, I like the playoffs. And we already accept that the best teams do not ultimately win the title most years. And I'm okay with that. But imbalanced schedule, Ben. Well, I don't like that, no. But imbalanced schedule, Ben. Well, I don't like that, no. And, you know, you have the Tigers winning the World Series last year,

or going to the World Series in 2012, and being worse than the Angels who missed the playoffs. How is that just, Ben? How is that anything but a flaw in the system? Well, I mean, you could balance the schedules without getting rid of divisions right you could but you would still have the angels tigers problem where the angels don't make the playoffs with 89 wins and the tigers get to walk in with 88 you'd still have that problem how that seems like it seems like that's hard to argue for any reason other than i'm an old man and i like things the way they are or i'm a old man and I like things the way they are.

Or I'm a young man and this is the only way I've ever known them to be. No, you're an old man. Okay. If I were an old man, I'd like the, the league's idea better than the division's idea. Uh,

cause that's what I would have grown up with. Um, true. I don't, I don't know. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not completely fair.

I think if you balance the schedules and now that at least there are the same number of teams in each division, it's less unfair or it would be less unfair than it used to be. And I guess it's a level of unfairness that I'm comfortable with, I suppose. Because, I mean, even if you, I don't know, what would the stretch run, what would the pennant races look like if it were just top eight teams? You would have, I mean, how many, I guess we could sort of look historically and see how many interesting races you would have per season compared to how many we have had with the divisional format. Is that the greatest good? Is that what we're trying to do, engineer excitement?

We're trying to create arbitrary and artificial excitement? Is that what the point of competition is? You're making me feel bad. You're playing devil's advocate very well here um i yeah to an extent i agree that it is the that would be a worthy goal if you were good at it but i'm not sure that we're we're good at it it's hard to it's hard to engineer excitement. Yeah. Although I guess, I guess it's worked.

Done it in this case already. Yeah. I mean, really, what would the typical September, late September look like? Do you think? Oh,

it'd be horrible. How many, how, I mean, yeah, there would be, I think this is how they do it in, like,

this is how they do it in, in like, isn't this how they do it in the english premier league i don't know i think it is like i think that there's one champion and that one champion gets to go to the champions league and i think the same team wins every year or like the same two teams win every year but they have relegation too they they also well so maybe that's all it takes but i mean like i know i certainly see a lot of people cheering for soccer teams that aren't going to win the the championship yeah like man you or that's that one liverpool liverpool i know people are in the liverpool those are both teams arsenal is a team i believe liverpool is a is a bad team, and I believe that's a popular team. We are going to get emails.

What have you done? All right. Yeah, I don't know. There are reasons to watch, but I think— Liverpool is fourth. Okay. But I don't know. It probably wouldn't be great for attendance or revenue or any of those things.

It seems like the theme of this podcast has generally been to put more wrenches in the situation and not remove them. So it's just not keeping in character to ask us to simplify and swing. I agree that the unbalanced schedule wrench should be removed, though. Do you? Yeah, I think that the unbalanced schedule rent should be removed, though. Do you? Yeah, I think so. I guess. But, you know, I mean, the unbalanced schedule doesn't exist for competition's sake. It exists because it's hard to schedule 2,430 contests.

I mean, it's just practically a difficult thing to do. It's one of the concessions they have to make to our demands for baseball every day for six months. Yeah. Play-ins are pretty fast, though, now. Mm-hmm. All right. Okay.

I'll let them know. Eric asks, how good would a player have to be to play in the big leagues as a practicing orthodox Jew as a player who cannot play on holidays he would miss roughly a third of the season due to not being able to play on Friday evenings and Saturdays along with

four days in April for Passover two in May for Shabbat and three in September October for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Would they have to be Hall of Fame caliber? It seems like they'd miss roughly a third of the games and still be taking up a roster spot.

I imagine it's different if they're a pitcher. What do you guys think? Hmm. Uh, yeah, pitcher would be different because you could at least try to arrange things so that, well,

there's not all that much flexibility in a five man rotation, but you could, you could at least try to arrange things so that well there's there's not all that much flexibility in a five-man rotation but you could you know you could try i imagine that you'd get a you'd get a um an exemption for the roster situation from mlb if if it were for religious reasons and in fact it could end up being something that a team could find beneficial if they were able to essentially use their triple a team as a sort of rotating 26th man knowing that they were going to be able to call guys up without having to deal with the sort of 10 day minimums of how long you have to stay down there and for various reasons it might actually create a certain level of flexibility that would offset some of the pain of not having that player around. So I would presume that's the case. I also wonder whether, like, let's say a guy, let's just say

that he's an average hitter. He's 100 OPS plus guy. If you gave him this schedule instead of the really brutal schedule that Major League Baseball players have to follow, what do you think his OPS plus becomes? Is it still 100 or is he better and by how much? Well, I don't know. There was a study recently. It might have been Tom Tango or someone who showed that there is a – I think it was – No.

Russell did a thing on rest. I think the one I'm thinking, might have really hurt himself in the long run in the rate statistic category by never resting. But I don't know. I would guess it would hurt more than help if we're talking about a third of the schedule. it would hurt more than help if we're talking about a third of the schedule yeah i mean i i probably would hurt more than it would help i'm not suggesting it would help more than it would hurt but i'm not sure i mean so mike kruko i don't know if he ever stuck with this theory but i remember him having this idea many many many years ago that you're basically going to lose some players' time to injury almost every year for every player, it seems like. And you're also going to see them sort of wear July because they're they pull a hamstring they should just

rotate one week off at a time for just maintenance like every player should get a week off at some point in the season um and you you rotate it so that hope you know in theory they're not getting hurt as much and you're not missing them unpredictably and I don't know if that idea has any merit. I don't know if it actually makes sense. But the point that he was making and that I would accept is that if you give guys regular rest when they're healthy, you're going to see their injuries drop and they're going to be better ballplayers. And that seems there's, that seems like something that probably is true. So, I mean, if you're just saying that, like, let's say you're losing a third of this guy's season, which is maybe a win or two or three, depends how good he is,

and losing a roster spot for some of that time, it would offset somewhat if his performance improved, and it would offset even more if it actually weren't a roster flexibility issue. I think that it would... I would imagine that any player who is good enough to make the majors is good enough to make the majors on an orthodox Jewish schedule. I disagree, I think. If we're talking about no exemptions, I mean, you wouldn't want to have a utility guy who's just unavailable two days a week, right? No, I guess you wouldn't,

but yeah, I guess you would. I mean, there's no way around it. If your value is marginal, then sure, you wouldn't. So how – I don't think you have to be a superstar. I'd say you'd have to be an above-average starter, an above-average regular, but not – but no, not a superstar. Okay. Above-average regular. Mm-hmm. All right. All right.

Let's make this the last one, and i don't know if we actually we just skipped that all-star question by the way did you notice that yeah i'll start again i didn't have anything to say i haven't thought about it yeah all right uh so i don't know how to answer this one it's a long question that we can't answer it's from dan brooks and the gist of the question which is too long and complicated to read but the gist of the question, which is too long and complicated to read, but the gist of the question is basically if teams got to pick which other teams were in their division, which teams they would pick. And I just thought instead of going through the whole thing and getting very complicated, I just wanted to know if,

let's say you were a team, let's you're the you know Red Sox and you they're realigning the divisions and you get to pick the teams that are going to be in your division what would be the first five teams that you would pick and what would be the last five teams you would pick and I'm curious to know like kind of what goes through your mind when you're thinking this is it strictly market size or do you start... I mean, how long term are you thinking and what goes into it? This is not a totally irrelevant question because since we do have the unbalanced schedule, we can all look at next year's schedule and see who's got the sort of raw deal for divisions. But looking over, say, a say a 30 year timeline i wonder how

much a team like let's say hypothetically the rangers are in a very favorable division hypothetically and let's say hypothetically that the brewers are in a really terrible one that there's like a real dollar figure to that you could probably almost calculate it if you really put your mind to it um So what would make for a good division component sort of structurally? I guess I'd look for the best combinations of short-term weakness and small market size, right? So probably my top pick would be the Brewers, right? Sorry, Brewers fans, but we've already done an episode where we said that the Brewers were like the least likely to win a World Series in some time span. Just between the fact that they are not currently very good and don't have the greatest farm system and have one of the smallest markets. They would probably be my top pick.

Let's see. I mean, obviously you would avoid the biggest, richest teams, I think, no matter how good they are in the short term. No, I guess they all are pretty good in the short term. I don't know. Maybe you'd take like the Rockies. Yeah, the Rockies seem like a team where they're – I mean empirically it seems that 20 plus years of baseball

have taught us that they have a structural disadvantage in their ballpark. Seems like it. It seems like it. It could be disproven still. They could disprove it, but it seems like it. To me, the Rockies might be, even though the Rockies don't have a bad market, I might pick them just because it's not clear that you can win at altitude.

Yeah. And then I'd probably take, well, I guess the Marlins are an interesting case because I would think they'd have to be on the top five as long as Laurie is there. But let's say the Marlins had a great owner all of a sudden. It's not a small market, although it's not one that's proven particularly hospitable to baseball, but it's sort of hard to separate that from the ownership. It's also one that's a lot more likely to move

to a good market than, for instance, the Reds are. Like the Reds are going to be the Reds forever. They're going to be the Cincinnati Reds. But you could see the Marlins or the Rays not being in Florida in 10 years. And then maybe you're stuck with, I mean, you don't know where they are, but maybe it's somewhere good. Maybe they're the Brooklyn team or the New Jersey team. And then you're dead. Yeah. And they also have a lot of good young talent that is coming along.

Yeah, I want to, I mean, my tendency is to want to just completely ignore anything remotely short-term because I'm thinking on like a 30- or 40-year time scale. But success does breed success. I don't know how long that lasts. I mean, in baseball between the numbers, they figured out how much a world series was worth. Right.

But I don't know how much of that is still around five years later. I mean, there's obviously the, the, um, the effect of success gets weaker the further out you go, but a good farm system does. I mean,

as like that piece I wrote last year about the Brewers, 10 years later, Carlos Gomez, if anybody didn't read it, the Brewers had the best farm system in baseball 10 years ago or maybe 11 now, and I looked at how long it takes for that farm system to just quit producing. And that farm system is still producing. It produced J.J. Hardy, which produced Carlos Gomez, and now they have the eighth best player in baseball

because of that farm system 11 years later. So it's not, yeah, short term actually does mean something for the long term. And it also means a lot if you are, if we're talking about a specific person, a specific executive who's not going to be around for 40 years with that team. It's in his or her best interest to want a team that's bad now

because it's more likely to have success while you're still there, right? Yeah. Okay, so my five, I guess I'll take the Brewers, take the Rockies, take the Marlins probably. I guess I might take Marlins or Mariners maybe. That's a good good market i like the mariners market i wouldn't want to go up against the mariners market yeah padres i do the padres yeah take the padres and uh nowhere there's just nowhere for the padres to expand they're just sort of stuck in san diego san diego is never going to get

any bigger or any richer or anything other than it is. And Pirates? Sure. You could go Pirates. I was thinking Indians. Yeah. Sure. Alright. And then for the

ones you don't want, you just don't want the Yankees and the Dodgers and the... No. Yeah, those teams. All right. Okay, well, send them in for next week. We'll do this again in 167 hours. And that's it.

Have a good weekend. All right.