Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 376: Listener-Selected Listener Emails

Episode Date: January 31, 2014

Ben, Sam, and special guest Ryan Sullivan answer listener emails about instant replay, roster changes, shortening the lineup, Seinfeld, and more.

What is the matter with you? You are making a mountain out of a molehill. Good morning and welcome to episode 376 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller, and we have another special guest today. It is our listener email show, and this will be the most listener email-ly of the listener email shows because we have a listener on the show today.

Dan Brooks, who was our guest earlier this week and told you about the Saber Seminar, our guest earlier this week and told you about the Saber Seminar is auctioning off or has auctioned off some special gifts of various sorts to support the Jimmy Fund, which is the Saber Seminar's good cause. One of those gifts was co-hosting an Effectively Wild email show. And it was snapped up very quickly. And the person who snapped it up was Ryan Sullivan, who joins us today. Hello, Ryan. Hey, guys. How are you? We are well, thank you. So tell us about yourself.

Well, first of all, my name is Ryan, as you announced, and I'm a big fan of Baseball Perspectives. I run the website NatsGM.com, which is a critical analysis website focusing on, obviously, the Washington Nationals and obviously some other, you know, I cover the Orioles. I do some college baseball. I do a lot of draft coverage and pretty much whatever I like within the umbrella of baseball. So I do that, and then I also do a podcast called The Red Porch Report, obviously a national space podcast that you can find on iTunes or from redporchreport.com. All right. So everyone can check out the site and the podcast so you are

you're a professional yeah you're you're an old hand at this uh this is no amateur um so uh what we're gonna do is uh wait before we before we do anything can i ask him a question since we have a real listener here sure so today ben on your in your chat you did a chat at baseball prospectus you were asked this you were asked this question by a fellow named mitchell from baton rouge he asked do you ever get tired of recording effectively wild it seems sam does but but you keep it going now i'm I'm worried. I feel like I'm picking up a little bit of a growing sentiment that the public considers Ben a hero, the hero of the show, the gritty scrapper, and that it considers me the villain, the heel, if you will. the heel, if you will. And I think, Ben, you and I both know that in fact we share 99.8% of our feelings about this show, and that includes both the warm glow that we both feel at times and the existential dread we feel many other times. And it's a complicated relationship

we have with this show. I think that it's fair to say that. You might not think it's fair to say that but but i think it's fair to say that but i just wanted to ask uh ryan whether you think that uh i that i suck like am i the am i the sucky part of this show is that is this is this a fair assessment that i suck no i just think it's the boss man gets the credit as always so i think you're just catching a little shrapnel is all. All right. So it's the man is keeping me down. That's the way it goes, right? I think it's just good branding.

I'm in there with the listeners in the Facebook group every day, talking, responding to comments. I'm a man of the people. That's true. You do spend a lot more of your life on facebook that's that's true yeah that's true can't deny that ben's always on facebook so we have let ryan pick the questions this week um so you can't complain if your question is not picked because we had an actual listener read through the listener emails and pick his favorite ones uh so you can just go ahead and start with whatever you want and read them if you have them in front of you oh and of course i don't have them in front of me sam do you have

them in front of me i'll read it i'll read i'll read the first one i can read the second the third the fourth i can read all of them if you want you can read them we didn't discuss this because we don't ever discuss anything but i'll just keep you can interrupt me anytime you want um the format of the show yeah yeah so all right so uh it'll be mostly me talking over people as usual so uh the first question is uh from brady uh who uh has an idea that he admits up front has plenty of holes in it uh when a pitcher comes up to hit why don't managers have their least valuable position player on the diamond come and pitch to him? From the additional pitches saved,

the pitcher might be able to throw to another batter or two. What do you think? Well, I would enjoy watching this. Oh, are we supposed to let the guests go first? I know what you think about most things. Yeah, that's true. I could have written your answer, put it in an envelope, sealed it up, and opened it three days later, and it would have been right on target. So let's hear what the guest has to say.

Okay. This sounds like one of those plans that was hatched over a few beers at a bar one night. This sounds like one of those plans that was hatched over a few beers at a bar one night, because I understand the logic to it, but there are just too many holes in it to go through it and practically move forward. The first of which is, I can't imagine what the media would do the first time one of the position players came in to pitch and injured themselves, or if one of the pitchers actually who was playing a defensive position injured themselves i can't imagine what that uh uh feedback would be on twitter and on uh you know baseball prospectus and the rest of the internet was kind of the first thing yeah we would probably support it uneffectively well but no one else yeah um yeah so that that seems like the biggest problem here.

And then maybe the other one is, it kind of reminds me of the question that comes up every postseason about whether you want to, how you want to align your rotation. Like if you want to concede a game where the other team's ace is starting, so you start your worst starter so that you can start your best starter on a day when they don't have a good starter so you can maximize your odds in that game. This is sort of similar. Do you want to concede or do you want to take it easy on the batter who is a pitcher and is not good? Or do you want to press the advantage and maximize it by keeping your pitcher in? I mean, the injury risk alone is probably a reason not to do this. So let's say that the average pitcher has 300 O OPS and the average hitter has a 700 OPS and, you know, David Ortiz has a has a 1000 OPS against the, you know, against a typical pitcher. And then you bring in this, you know, the shortstop to pitch. So do you think all of their OPSs go up proportionately?

Like, would the pitcher go to 500 and the hitter go to 900 and David Ortiz go to 1200? like would the pitcher go to 500 and the hitter go to 900 and david ortiz go to 1200 because if it's the if that's the case you actually don't have any any more to gain by throwing you know a scrub against the pitcher i mean it's not that this would make actually this would make sense if pitchers hit zero across the board and you felt like you could get quite a bit worse and still have them hit zero like if there was this margin of zero that you were kind of wasting, like you were using too good a pitcher to keep them at zero. But the fact is that pitchers do get hits, and they would get many more hits. And it seems to me possibly proportionately more hits.

So you wouldn't actually gain anything mathematically from it. Furthermore, you'd have a pitcher playing in the field, and so your defense would be harmed. And so it's conceivable that the pitcher would actually, uh, gain more from this setup, uh, than, you know, than, than other hitters. But so, um, uh, so I'm not actually sure that the math even, even necessarily would, even get the advantage of the pitcher not facing So you're talking about the only benefit being just three or four pitches. So I don't think it's enough. He does specify that it is the least valuable position player. So this would have to be, it could work on a team that had a perfect combination of a

really, really bad position player who had some pitching experience? Yeah, but probably not. Yeah, well, sure. That'd be nice. Well, actually, I actually, for a few minutes, liked this idea. Actually, I did not like this idea at all. There was zero part of me that liked this idea. But what I started toying with was the idea that you should have to do this that you that a pitcher should not be allowed to

face another pitcher that it should be deemed uh merciless and so you actually would have to bring in a position player and i liked that idea because then teams would have an incentive to carry a position player who can really pitch and we all that. There is not one person alive who does not want two-way players. Nobody. Nobody doesn't want that. It's amazing that it hasn't happened because we all want it more than anything in the world. All right. Are we done with that one?

Sure. All right. So Matt asks a question about instant replay. How much more important do you think that this makes a good Sabre savvy manager, this being having instant replay? I know the number of plays this will impact is relatively small, but you just know at some point that Ned Yost will challenge a Salvador Perez blooper turned from a fly out into a single

so that Alcides Escobar can bat with two outs and perez on first the cubs put a member of their front office uh on the bench next to new manager renteria and rick renteria and one of their coaches is a catching and strategy coach are more teams going to populate staffs with guys who can tell a manager when a moment is really important now that another opportunity for the manager to impact the game that way has been invented so to to boil this down do you see um this being a place for a good manager to really separate himself from a bad manager strategically i'm not answering i i think dan proved on the podcast earlier this week that the first chance you get to throw the flag, throw the flag.

So would you, if it were Sal Perez, two outs, blooper, turned it from a fly out to a single, Alcides Escobar batting with Perez on first, is that worth it? I mean, does that qualify even under Dan's rubric, or is even that just too low a threshold? Because it does seem like if you're a manager and you see this play that doesn't go your way, even if it's not meaningful at all, and maybe the bar is so low that everything is meaningful enough, but even if it were just so insignificant,

it would be really hard to keep that flag in your pocket if you thought that justice had not been served. I mean, there's this tremendous longing in humans to see justice happen. And if you feel like you have not had justice done for you, it would be really hard not to make a protest, even if it were totally pointless. I mean, you see how much managers, like, get passionate and fired up over things. I mean, I think this is the way that things are going anyway. And we've talked about how teams are hiring new kinds of coaches to be the liaison between the dugout and the front office and how maybe managers are getting more savvy about this stuff or at least are more open to input from people who are. So I think that's kind of the trend anyway.

Maybe this moves that along slightly. I feel like the – I don't even know if it's Saber's savviness, though, in this case. I feel like it's like fearlessness or willingness to be annoying because as we talked about, annoying um because as we as we talked about a manager who who does this uh is at risk of being criticized for doing it and for using up his challenges when he might need a challenge more even later so you would need a kind of manager who who would not mind that and would be okay with being criticized and would be okay with with annoying the umpires and and the opposing players and all of those things and just uh doing what this what the math says is right so i think that's probably even more important than than the saber savviness of the guy

but don't you i mean i think that it seems to me almost a certainty that within a year of this rule coming into play, we will see a – like a – I don't even and what the – and basically what Dan and Russell were talking about, but you'll see a chart that shows that for every inning, every situation, and what sort of win probability you would need in order to make throwing a flag worthwhile. So wouldn't it be saber-savvy to have that chart memorized, maybe have that chart in your back pocket, just like NFL coaches need to know whether to go for two or kick the extra point? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't know whether there's any manager at that point right now. I don't know.

Does any manager even have a win expectancy table in his back pocket? Maybe you have some basic idea. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if you laminated it kept it nice seems like a useful thing to have i would i would have one i like things that are laminated me too uh can i ask uh this was not this was also a question that matt asked um and ryan didn't select it but it's quick so can we just do this one uh grant

balfour uh whose name i actually can't pronounce right balfour but i can't not say balfour grant balfour hit just one batter the past four seasons facing 1015 batters uh so will he hit an oriole in 2014 if he does does he have a leg to stand on within the code, even if there's the presumption that he did it with intent? And if he does, would you consider him a monster, a stud, or a fool if he did hit someone? And let's presume that he doesn't hit someone in a way that obviously costs his team a game. It can be difficult for those of us who do not play the game to understand the unwritten rules at times, but it seems to me that this would be a violation, right? Because you would be punishing the players

for the front offices or the owners' sins, and that doesn't seem like something that anyone would be in favor of. Ryan, do you want to see Grant Balfour go headhunting well I mean you know while I would like to see the entire Orioles fan base get enraged just for the sheer amusement of it but no I mean

it's not a part of the game and like Ben said you know this isn't a you're retaliating at the wrong person I mean you know if it was some way to throw at Angelos or the training staff, that might be one thing. But, you know, now I just think there's a chance he'll hit him. I do think that'll happen. I think he'll hit somebody next year, but, you know.

An Oriole? Not an Oriole. An Oriole. But the thing is that so many times retaliatory pitches are not aimed at the person who did you harm. I mean, there is a collective guilt. This is part of baseball's unwritten rules. There's a collective guilt that the team shares when somebody does wrong. And so you don't necessarily hit the pitcher who hits you.

You hit the guy who corresponds to the guy who was hit on your team, the cleanup hitter or the rookie. You hit the wrong guy all the time. So these guys are all willing to get in bed with Peter Angelos and take his money. They're all getting rich off Peter Angelos' mistreatment of you. I mean, there is literally a guy who will be spending Grant Balfour's money. I don't know who the Orioles are going to sign now, but whoever it is will be putting his great-grandchildren through college with Grant Balfour's money.

Why not throw at that guy? I mean, and I'm not saying that as like a human, but I'm saying that as like a hypothetical rage-driven baseball player with a foulest mouth in the game. Why not hit that guy? If you took $3 million out of your pocket. Yeah, it would be tough not to. It would be tough not to.

Make a good case. So would you consider him a monster, a stud, or a fool? I consider most headhunting players somewhere between monster and fool, probably. So somewhere in there. Yeah, can there be an option d just like a good teammate uh yeah yeah pick whatever adjective you want this this list can grow we could spend the rest of the show coming up with adjectives to describe grant All right. So this one is from Steven, who writes,

To get both AL and NL back to playing the same kind of baseball, what if the game were played by NL rules and the rosters were expanded by two players, but with no DH? Now a manager can choose to let a pitcher bat or pinch hit for the pitcher. However, the pitcher does not have to leave the game when hit four, and each pinch hitter can hit only once and is then out of the game. So the manager's decision on pitching changes becomes like the AL, and decisions on whether to have the pitcher bat are based on game situation and available pinch hitters. In effect, this provides an expanded bench,

allowing more pinch hitting without pitchers leaving the game, but pinch hitting for a non-pitcher would remain as it is now and more substitution slash playing time options so ryan why'd you pick this one i just thought it was an interesting theory behind it i mean i'm not one that necessarily has a problem with the nl and al playing different styles of baseball but i did think at least it was interesting to think about changing the rosters a little bit I thought it would add some pretty interesting player personnel moves during the game at least it could you know whether you want to pinch hit for the pitcher in the third inning

with two outs and nobody on or do you want to let the pitcher go ahead and bat there and save your position player for later or your pinch hitter later i mean like i said there's a lot of moving parts here probably could never happen but i did think it was a kind of an interesting kind of scenario and i'm glad you guys thought too it is interesting that this address this attempts to sort of address the different styles of play um by sort of finding the common strategies that you want to uh you know that you want to prevail in whatever does happen. So if you consider pitchers batting to be like an automatic bad thing, a bad idea, then this gets rid of that. But if you consider the sort of blandness of having a dh uh taking some of the decisions out of the manager's hand

and this gets rid of that too and uh it appeases the players union um by adding two roster spots instead of one um while also kind of eliminating the dh which the you know the dh himself the the sort of type of hitter that some people just, I think, don't like. I think that there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a certain type of player that does not find great popularity because he's a DH. And you see it with the way that, you know, people don't want to vote for MVPs who are DH, or they don't want to put DHs in the hall of fame. There's just, I think there's people who just don't want to put D.H.'s in the Hall of Fame. I think there's people who just don't like the idea of a player who only does one thing and the sort of, I don't know, personality characteristics that you project on such a guy.

So it eliminates that sort of guy. I don't know if that's a happy thing or a sad thing. D.H.'s, when they're good, are some of the most fun guys in the game. I mean, nobody doesn't like David Ortiz. And it would be sad to not have him. Although, he'd be playing now. I mean, David Ortiz would still be playing in a world without DHs. It's actually probably, I don't know,

it's sort of hard to imagine the player who wouldn't be playing in a world without DH. I mean, so if there was, if there was no DH, can you think of sort of five guys in the game who wouldn't be in the game? Dan Vogelbach. He's in the Cubs. He's a, I mean, he's not even on an AL team. This is, that was like a, yeah, that's, well, that's, it isn't, I mean, it's conceivable that his i mean his prospect status might be considerably lower if there wasn't that escape valve but you know he'd be in the game he'd

be a lot i mean he'd be still be hitting baseball somewhere uh but like well raul how didn't raul labon has played outfield last year so you can't say him uh you know bobby abreu would be one that you would have said like a couple years ago, except that he played in the NL for a year after you thought that he was toast. So I don't actually know that this would kick anybody out of the sport. There aren't that many dedicated DHs. And the ones that are are really good hitters. I mean, Hafner hasn't played a game in in the field in like seven years

and he's not all that great hitter so hafner's gone right we can agree that hafner would have been gone four years ago yeah it would have to be someone injury prone someone who just couldn't handle playing in the field um ralabanya's play started 98 games in the field last year that's amazing. That is amazing. I don't think that will happen again. So Paul Molitor is often held up as the example of the guy whose career was kept going because he could DH,

and he played half his career as a DH, and he got 3,300 hits, and he's in the Hall of Fame. And without that, he wouldn't have gotten all those hits, and he wouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. But it seems to me overwhelmingly likely that Paul Molitor would have probably played all but the last, like, two seasons of that. Maybe, if that, even in a world without DHs.

I mean, he was in his 30s. He had a shortstops background. I'm sure he would have slid over and been a bad third baseman or a terrible second baseman or an okay first baseman just fine. So, yeah, all right. So, that yeah that works it's probably it's probably the thing about that solution is it's very complicated and it it doesn't doesn't do much that adding a dh in the nl doesn't do yes although although that's how i would like to to get them back to playing the same kind of baseball, just at a DH. Uh-oh, Ben. Uh-oh.

You've done it. You've done it, Ben. What have I done? You've shared an opinion. You've shared an opinion about the DH. We made it 376 episodes. No, I've said it before. I remember bashing pitchers hitting. We mocked pitchers hitting, but that's not the same.

I think pitchers hitting is the dumbest, craziest thing about this sport, and it's by far my favorite part of this sport, other than weird baseball situations. Pitchers catching would be my favorite thing, but this is a pretty solid alternative. All right, now I have to... You guys talk amongst yourselves while I find the other one I'm supposed to get. This one, oh, my gosh.

This one is so long. All right. This is from Brendan. This is about Tom Verducci ideas, which we talked about and which were essentially their own email show. And he's got a few simple suggestions. So let's just pretend this is a new Tom Verducci column and we'll go over each of them. College baseball drastically, dramatically increased interest by moving to wooden bats. The college game just needs to appeal more to existing baseball

fans, and baseball fans love the wooden bat game. Easy fix. I think that in creating the feeling that there's more continuity between the college game and the program game would be pretty helpful. I don't know that aesthetically it would make a big difference but just feeling like this was an extension of the game of the pro game seems like it might help i would be zero percent more likely to watch college baseball if there were wooden vets oh yeah Oh, yeah. Not against it, but it would not dramatically increase my interest. Yeah, it feels to me that if you want to fix college baseball, you just eliminate the minor leagues. And if you want to, I mean, that would be horrible. We love the minor leagues.

So college baseball doesn't need to be fixed. We have minor league. There's 225 minor league teams that are all drawing fans across the country it's a pretty popular sport uh when you consider it that way uh but uh zero percent i would say go ahead i was just gonna say the college game just needs more of a spotlight like what they're doing on espn you i mean the product's great now particularly with the changed bats i love college baseball i I think they just need more exposure. Can you do me a favor?

Tell me how to watch college baseball because I don't actually know how to watch it. I feel like I haven't invested the time to make it a sort of a fun viewing experience, and it's just such a one-off thing that I just sort of tune in and then pretty quickly tune out. So, like, how do you watch college baseball? What do you look for? how do you watch college baseball? What, uh, what do you look for? What sort of, what do you look for games? Do you look for players? Are you, um, are you interested in certain storylines? What, what, what should I do to why? Cause I would love to like college baseball more. I do it much more for the players and I approach it

just kind of educating myself in the draft, but you know, there's so many resources out there now, whether you want to actually go watch the Cape or whatever you want to use your site or what have you. There's just so much availability out there. And with it now being, like I said, on ESPNU, they show it at SEC Game of the Week, you can see normally really good Friday night starters. I mean, you're looking at guys like Tyler Beattie at Vanderbilt

or Aaron Nola at LSU or goodness whoever's going to start on Friday nights in Florida I mean you can see some great players just doing that and Fox College Sports does a pretty good job of showing a lot of games so you got to look for it I mean you got to have a DVR and actually try to find it but I'm definitely watching more players and teams than I am I mean I couldn't tell you who wins the game half the time at the end of the day. I can tell you whether this pitcher could deal or whether this hitter can hit. You know what? I think what would help college baseball a lot, actually, is if teams drafted before the college season started.

And so there were something like 900 guys who were actually attached to big league teams, and you could tune in and watch the guy that your team just drafted, sixth overall, playing college games. And I know that would scare the heck out of teams. They would hate it. But I think that would actually do a lot. ESPN does a great job for the College World Series, kind of putting it at the bottom where those guys got drafted.

I'm with you. I think that would help a lot Oh, so yeah, that's right, because there is a little bit of time after the draft of the World Series is still going, right? Correct. So yeah, that would be tremendously fun to watch I also, I feel like one of the things that I would like more is if I got a sense that

college baseball was some sort of like incubation lab for or is it incubation lab you know like what do you call it incubation incubator for new ideas like the thing I like about college football and college basketball is that there's a such a broad array of styles and you get the feeling that teams are experimenting with things or at the very least they're playing like sort of on the extremes of uh of uh different styles of play and i've never got the sense that the college baseball game uh is that much different it there's more bunting because play is sloppy got metal bats and there's metal bats but you don't get i do you see and i maybe i just don't watch enough but do you you see coaches – do you see the equivalent of the no-punt coach in baseball, like the coach who's doing something really weird? Because if there was, I'd watch that, but I don't ever get the sense that's happening.

I wouldn't – I don't know if it's quite that drastic, but you certainly see teams build their programs around whether – like New Mexico where they're playing at altitude. They're going to build their team around hitting like the dj peterson's whereas you know some of the schools in the north you know when these maybe they have a bigger park they try to get more pitching just because you know it's going to be more valuable in kind of the bigger parks that they play in so i would say answer it that way but i don't think you see one team you know they don't have a field goal kicker because they're going for it every fourth down or anything of that nature yeah yeah i would i would love to see extreme sorts of styles of play um uh so eight than you do actually probably in college baseball really yeah just they build their teams around the parks and some teams are known for speed and some are known for you know having

big time left-handed hitters because they have a short right porch and things of that nature you know more about baseball than we do. Yeah, definitely. Clearly. I'm just a big nerd about college baseball and the draft. Well, things of that nature are things that I like, so that sounds fun. I'm going to have to check out the Cape. All right, so this is his next Verducci-esque idea.

Minor league baseball games need to become more meaningful. Small communities need to feel like their team is playing for some kind of truly meaningful championship. I don't have a problem with that, but I think, sorry for answering before I ever give anybody else a chance to answer. I just realized I'm doing that. I mean, minor league baseball doesn't work financially, I don't think, if you don't have the relationship that they have to the big league affiliates.

And the big league affiliates naturally prioritize their development. And so it's very hard, it seems to me, to sort of serve two masters in that way. And so the pure competitiveness of it is the thing that gets sacrificed. I don't know if there's a way to get around that. Yeah, me neither i read it you know more difficult at the lower levels you can have some veterans at triple a if you cared about winning you know from that hand but the lower you go the tougher it's going to be in that respect i I, uh, I also, um, you know, I think this is true to some degree. Um, but also if you do go, I mean, if you spend much time in one, in one minor league park for a season, you will find that in fact, there's like a core of dedicated fans who don't care about the

big league club at all, that they are completely dedicated to the minor league affiliate and that treat it like, you know, a real team. And that are, I mean, they're as into it as anybody you ever see. So I don't know how much the kind of lack of competitiveness is necessarily picked up on by the average fan. I mean, I haven't, you know, the problem is that I've always lived in areas that are around big league clubs. I've never lived in Iowa, where that's the closest good baseball you have. I've always been in San Diego, LA, or Northern California, where it's very clear that these are second-tier teams. And Ben has always lived on the Upper East Side.

West. Upper West Side. And so, Ryan, have you ever lived in a minor league only area? I live in the D.C. area. So obviously we have the Nationals in Baltimore, the Orioles up the road. But, you know, I go to a lot of Frederick games. I go to a lot of Hagerstown and Potomac. And, you know, I'm probably at 30 to 50 minor league games a year.

So it's just so it's just so it was just I was curious kind of your take because Sam I think you're right on it I I think the fans are pretty knowledgeable at that minor league level that yeah you know Manny Machado is probably not going to be with us the whole year but they get into their team and I think that it is a source of pride when they win the regular season or they win the first half of the regular season so I don't know I don't want to say the question is off, but I don't get necessarily the impression that that's the problem. I mean, the stands are normally crowded and the product's pretty good if you're into baseball. I did read a study recently in the in the Sabre Research Journal

that talked about what factors drive minor league attendance and how there was a perception that winning doesn't have any effect, that people just show up no matter whether the team is good or bad in the same numbers that they would, and that they come out for fireworks night or free hot dog night or whatever promotion there is, but not for a winning team. And this study suggested that that wasn't really the case, that a winning team. And this study suggested that that wasn't really the case, that a winning team does draw better, and obviously a team with some top prospect on it draws better. So there is, I think there's some relationship there, but I don't know how much more they could do

to promote that. So Ryan, you've been to playoff games, I assume, minor league playoff games? A few, yeah. Would you describe it as a playoff atmosphere relative to the regular season games? Can you tell it's different? It's amped up for sure, absolutely. I mean, the crowds are more filled, obviously, just first and foremost. But, yeah, the atmosphere is much bigger. I mean, you know, it's like a regular college basketball game,

and then a good team comes into town. Obviously, the electricity, the energy is a little higher. Yeah. I mean, I don't think the fans are diehards like when you lose a playoff game in the majors, but, you know, it means a lot to them the same. All right. Yeah, so I don't think that's necessarily a problem that needs to be dealt with um uh the last one is increased parody in the game and um of course this is not

a great time in baseball's history to be complaining about the lack of parody uh with the pirates and the a's um and the orioles and uh having recently made uh the playoffs and with the Royals acting as though they did. And, you know, everybody's been pretty good at some point recently. It is not like it was three years ago. But do you feel like parody is, or the lack of parody, is sort of a monster that's about to strike again? I mean, are we just really really lucky to be in this blip um and is it conceivable that um all these teams that i just named and some

others are about to go into their next 18 year stretches without postseason or is that the the generationless uh uh you know the entire generation without a playoff appearance phenomenon gone. Yeah, we've talked about that before when we did those shows on the lack of correlation between spending and winning, and we wondered whether that was here to stay or whether this is just a deceptive blip, as you say. And I think I lean toward it being a blip, as you say. And I think I lean toward it being a blip, but it also not ever being as bad as maybe it has been at times. Because I think the luxury tax works to some extent, I think.

I don't know. It almost made the Yankees not spend. Not quite, but almost. Were you an Orioles fan before you were a Nats fan? I was. And so what's your take on the Orioles? Is that an organization that – well, let me ask you. Let me put it this way. In the next 10 years, how many postseason appearances will they have? In the next 25, how many World Series will they win?

Oh, wow. season appearances will they have in the next 25 how many world series where they went oh wow um yeah that's we like to predict things that can't possibly be even conceived of i mean i love the pitching they have in the minor leagues so but that division's so hard maybe they make the playoffs one out of four years one out of three years really well that would be considered i mean that would be successful for almost any team in baseball well i think the fifth wild card or the fifth playoff team helps they may go to a sixth late but yeah maybe you're right maybe it is more like 25 percent so you don't think they're a lost franchise at all so that's because if i were naming if i were naming teams that would be contenders to be victims of a lack of parity, for a number of reasons, the Orioles would be sort of one of the maybe four or five that I would name.

So if you're not that pessimistic about them, and frankly, I'm not that pessimistic about any of them right now. I really, at this point, I don't see a lack of parity as a problem. But a couple of years ago, I saw it as a huge problem. So it's really hard to say probably. Make up your mind. I think baseball did a good job of it with cleaning up, if you want to call it that way, the spending at the amateur level. I mean you can't have a Yankee team or a big market team or a small market team for that matter just flood the market and get all the amateur talent now. Ryan, I love you. I love you so much.

Ben and I have been saying this for so long and everybody says the opposite. I'm so, so happy that you say this. such an obvious thing that the new collective bargaining agreement in the short term limits the ability of a team like the Pirates to go out and make a big splash on the international market or in the draft. But in the long term, it totally promotes parity. Absolutely. And the guys that you're buying in free agency are just, I mean, you can see it with the Yankees. If they're going to keep buying these old guys, it's just going to kind of keep rolling over itself. If they're going to keep buying these old guys, it's just going to kind of keep rolling over itself.

All right. So Brady again. Two Bradys. Brady, it's your lucky day. Someone in this show likes you today. We like you all the time, but someone really likes you. Brady asks, what's your favorite Seinfeld episode? And this was before the news of the Seinfeld reunion came out.

This is well-timed. Oh, I didn't hear about this. Yeah, apparently there's going to be some sort of Seinfeld reunion. Jerry let slip earlier today. It's not clear what it is, but he said it's not a commercial, and it's something, and we'll know soon. And I was just— With or without Michael Richards? and we'll know soon.

And I was just... With or without Michael Richards? He was spotted on the street with Jason Alexander, so presumably he's in it, and supposedly there are other Seinfeld characters, but we don't know exactly who. And I was just re-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with my girlfriend the other day because she hasn't seen it,

and we were just watching the Seinfeld reunion episode of that, which was very good. So I'm excited about this. As for – yeah, go ahead. If I can get a gig, I guess Mel Gibson will be back in a movie soon. He's been in – wasn't he in? He was in some terrible movie. The Beaver. So I don't – this is an impossible question to answer.

I don't know. The first one that comes to mind for me is maybe the Merv Griffin show episode. Just because it has a few very distinctive Seinfeld things in it. It has the Merv Griffin it. It has, uh, the Merv Griffin show. It has George's deal with the pigeons. It has, uh, Jerry trying to put his girlfriend to sleep so he can play with the toys.

And it has the sidler in Elaine's office all in one episode, uh, which is pretty, pretty packed. So I could make a strong case for any number of episodes, but, um, that, yeah, that came to mind quickly. Ryan?

For me, it's probably the airline episode where Jerry's in first class and Elaine's in coach and she's trying to sneak up into first class. Good one. That was the first one that jumped to mind to me oh yeah no that's a i assume that's a great one i've seen like one and a half episodes of zine bell i don't have the one where he hits the golf ball into the whale is the only one i remember i saw that one biologist oh well that's one of the best all right good that's why i quit i thought can only go downhill from here i i watched that

episode and said this is the greatest show on tv i'm never watching it again yeah i don't know um i don't know why i was never into seinfeld um actually i do know why uh i was never into seinfeld i was never Seinfeld because I was allowed to watch two shows a week on weeknights to, you know, two TV shows a week on weeknights during my sort of middle school and early high school years. And Seinfeld was on Thursday. What do you think are the odds that I ever made it to Thursday with shows left? Never, ever, ever. I'd be like, oh yeah, I'm totally going to save one of these for later in the week but it was Fresh Prince and Blossom every time so that was that that's not a bad yeah the holy trinity

of of 90s sitcoms for me is is Seinfeld Fresh Prince and Frasier and I think they all hold up pretty well uh Frasier was Tuesday I occasionally got to Frazier. I mean, it was on Thursday at first, but then it moved to Tuesday. So I occasionally got to Frazier. Uh, so yeah. And then, well, then I went through my wheel of fortune phase where I would burn through them

on wheel of fortunes. And I would actually, I would tape the other wheel of fortunes and watch them in the morning before I went to school. I taped a wheel of fortune just so everybody knows. That's a thing about me. Your dad listens to this show, so I'm just going to say that you should have let Sam watch Seinfeld, Mr. Miller. Three or four shows a week, too, while you're at it. I will say that my favorite Fresh Prince joke – not episode, but favorite Fresh Prince joke, which doesn't hold up that well, but it's when Hillary's husband, the weatherman, dies.

And so she goes out dating, and she finds problems with every guy that she dates because she hasn't gotten over her husband, who she's widowed by. Good travel. she's who she's widowed by and um yeah there you so so she and she and she and will go on a double date to the theater i believe and she uh things are going well he seems good but she's she can't get over this this blemish on his face this this mark on his face and and uh will's trying to get her to to to to get over it and he yells her, you're making a mountain out of a mole, Hill. And I remember that. I remember thinking that that line was so, so precisely placed in this story that it seemed almost certain to me that the entire storyline came out of that joke. And they had to figure out a storyline to fill that joke.

And so for the rest of my teenage years, whenever I would watch TV, I would always be on the lookout for that joke that I thought was the seed for the entire episode. And it was very rare that you would spot it. All right. So David and Sarah – David, I guess. David shares his email address but david asks sam you're the owner of a baseball team and your player pool is the 30 starting catchers in major league baseball ben your team is comprised of no see it's acceptable it's acceptable it's not acceptable i think it is these days in this the standards have fought that the

world has moved on i think you can say that now ben you against it you are literally killing me with your loose interpretation uh no you it is not comprised of it comprises the 30 i'm against it don't get me wrong all right good ben your team comprises the 30 mlb starting first baseman your two teams are going to play each other in a series, and I'd like to hear you construct your teams with these players, assign positions to each of them. You don't have to worry about pitcher, by the way. Jeremy Hellickson is going to be all-time pitcher for us, apparently, but you have to fill the rest of your team with all first basemen, and I have to fill my team with all catchers. team with um with all first baseman and i have to fill my team with all catchers i don't know if we're necessarily gonna i don't think we're gonna do this player by player because i didn't leave enough time to do this but uh what is who has the advantage in this uh i think i do i do too i i for at first i thought i did and the more i about it, the more I was convinced that you do. Because you only need one first baseman who can catch.

And I would say that in almost, not all, but in almost all cases, I would take the first baseman over the catcher, the equivalent catcher, at any other position. It's only catcher where I'm gonna have the advantage and you only need one you only need mauer you know put mauer at catcher and then the rest of your guys are all pretty good now there's the lefty thing you're gonna you're i mean two-thirds of your guys are eliminated from playing a third of the positions or half the positions so that's not insignificant but i would guess that uh you win it especially because a lot of first basemen are would be bad at other positions but did play other positions uh they've moved down the defensive spectrum so at least they have the experience but most catchers are just catchers they were catchers when they were eight they've

been catchers this entire time no you know very few catchers have ever played center field. But there are, you know, there are first basemen who've played center field. I don't know if there's one right now. And I don't know if there's a starter. But, you know, Mark Kotze and Darren Erstad and, you know, various guys have made the move. And you can probably find some. Certainly they've played outfield.

Lance Burtman played center field for a year. That was the thing I took away from Zachary Levine's case today. I had totally forgotten the year that Lance Burtman was a centerfielder. Yeah, that's amazing. I once, by the way, do you remember when, oh, jeez, I'm forgetting his name. The guy at ESPN who we used to like so much, he had like a column, hang on, Eric Neal? Eric Neal, is that his name? Eric Neal is that his name I'm forgetting it geez I'm forgetting it yeah Eric Neal Eric Neal so Eric Neal used to write a column for ESPN sorry I blanked on his name and it was really good it was this great column on ESPN it was sort of weird it was like in the early days of stat header and he was stat heady but he was also funny and sort of kind of like Jim Baker-esque.

And one of the things he would do is suggest a nickname for players, and one of the players he suggested was Lance Berkman, and I suggested the nickname Trunk Space, and it got a mention in his column, and I was really excited. All right. I have to go pretty soon, because as you know, elementary is almost on. So we're going to do one more. And I believe it's – yeah, so this one is going to be from a friend of the show, Eric Hartman, who asks,

would it ever be worth it for a team to play with eight men on the field to shorten the lineup? Ryan, let me ask you, would it ever be worth it for a team to play with eight men on the field to shorten the lineup? Can you do it? I don't think so. I think it would be an automatic out.

But let's imagine you could. I mean, in softball, you can if you start the game with eight. Not if you start the game with nine and one leaves, then it becomes an automatic out. But if you start the game softball, you can if you start the game with eight. Not if you start the game with nine and one leaves, then it becomes an automatic out. But if you start the game with eight, you can. So let's assume if you start the game with eight, you're allowed to. I better have Andrelton Simmons playing the middle infield.

You had better. Yeah. No, I can't imagine it possibly could be. Unless you've – yeah, I can't imagine it possibly could be unless you've yeah i can't imagine a scenario then i don't think so yeah the problem is that in order i mean it's oh it's overwhelmingly likely unless your last year's brewers it's overwhelmingly likely that the guy you're going to want to kick out of your infield is one of your better defenders too so you're not just taking out a defender you're going to want to kick out of your infield is one of your better defenders too so you're not just taking out a defender you're you're likely taking out your best and probably at a crucial position so I could imagine a scenario well I couldn't really but if you had a guy who was you know your worst hitter and he was Adam Dunn playing you know the outfield then you might

not lose too much but you want Adam Dunn's bat other than that one year you want Adam Dunn playing you know the outfield then you might not lose too much but uh you want Adam Dunn's bat other than that one year you want Adam Dunn's bat in your lineup so I don't know maybe the year that Adam well no because he was the DH uh well maybe the year that Adam Dunn when he was the DH maybe they just should have they would have well they certainly would have been better off if they could have skipped Adam Dunn so if they could have played with skipping the DH, if Eric will allow us to skip the DH, and in fact, there are a lot of teams that carry really garbage DHs. Yeah, the Orioles want to do that this year. In fact, I would bet that, we should run a query on this, but I would bet that something

like 30% of the games that AL teams play feature a DH who is worse than the average hitter in the lineup. So in those 30% of games, they would all like to skip their DH if they could. Like if the pitcher didn't have to bat and they could just skip the DH, they would. So I guess the answer to Eric's question is if it were allowed, yes, you would shorten your lineup to eight guys 30% of the time. Okay. Fair? Sure. Let's take a vote.

Do we vote? Fair. Yes? We skip DH? Yes? Well, the average DH last year hit 245,325,402, which is a 261 true average. So basically a league average hitter. Yeah.

Right. So there we go. All right, Ryan, it was fun to have you. Yeah, thank you so much, guys. This was a blast. It was also nice that you both knew more about baseball than we did, but were very considerate about not embarrassing us about that fact yes well thank you guys and i just wish i could have brought a topic and made

it easier for you guys you brought eight it was under it was wonderful yeah uh dan if you want to make the real money next time auction off dates with us that would that would really rack up the money and our your wife and my girlfriend wouldn't mind because it would be about beating cancer but this was fun I'm glad we could do this I think there was a Fresh Prince episode about that actually alright Ryan

plug everything you do one more time well thank you guys I'm editor in chief I run the website natsgm.com you can find me on twitter at natsgm.com spelled You can find me on Twitter at natsgm.com, spelled out. And if you could give a listen to my weekly podcast about the Nationals, it's called the Red Porch Report. You can find it either at redporchreport.com or you can find it on iTunes.

We'd love to have you listen. And thank you guys for letting me join you. I listen every day, and it's been a real fun time talking baseball with you guys. Yeah, thanks for coming on. guys yeah thanks for coming on uh so coming on end of the week housekeeping our facebook group is facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild lots of people joining this week uh our email address for listener emails next week is podcast at baseball prospectus.com and we appreciate when you leave us ratings and reviews on itunes and to us on iTunes as it helps more people find the show. So have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back next week. Wait.

You should ask him how he wants to be introduced and what you want to promote. Yeah. What you want to plug it's just gonna you're just gonna wing it gonna hand it over to him to tell us who he is yeah that works too yeah okay some people like to be announced is all some people don't some people are terribly uncomfortable being announced well this is our show and we make the rules. All right. Yeah.

From now on, everybody announces themselves. It's the official policy of Effectively Wild.