Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 386: Listener Emails/Ricky Smith on Losing His Date to Derek Jeter

Episode Date: February 14, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Mike Trout, Masahiro Tanaka, Javier Baez, and more, and Ben talks to Ricky Smith about being Jetered (at 44:17).

She took my hand And tried to make me understand That she would always be there And I looked away And she ran away from me today I'm such a liar And she ran away from me today I'm such a liar Good morning and welcome to episode 386 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectus.com.

I'm Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. Hey. Hello. We are taking a break from our team preview podcast to do our usual Friday listener email show. and writer and told me a story about losing his date to Derek Jeter, which he told on Twitter first and then told in entertaining fashion to me. So you can listen to that after our questions and answers about baseball. So if you want to skip to that, you can find the timestamp in the episode summary somewhere.

Otherwise, I have some questions about baseball that we can answer i have some questions about your interest in derek cheater's dating life yeah uh i can't confirm the story but i i enjoy it nonetheless um okay uh so this question comes We got some good ones this week This one comes from Coleman from Southampton in the United Kingdom The following question occurred to me after A.J. Burnett signed a one-year $16 million deal with the Phillies today If a pitcher was projected to post a 3.5 ERA while pitching 200 innings, he could probably command a similar number to Burnett on a one year deal.

If, however, all 30 teams were given a crystal ball based guarantee that he would achieve those numbers, how much would the amount change by? Let's assume the pitcher is old like Burnett and will only accept a one-year deal. While the risk of injury and poor performance is eliminated, so is the potential for a truly great season. I assume that teams would value certainty, but how much of a salary bump would it lead to, and would there be a difference in percentage increase between pitchers and hitters? I have an answer. Do you have an answer? Can I just first say that I wish that I had been at Prospectus when AJ Burnett signed with the Blue Jays? Because it just occurred to me what a great transaction analysis headline AJ AJ would have been.

Yeah, that's a shame. I have an answer. Do you have an answer? I'm going to move my chair first. Hang on. I want to move my chair. Go ahead. It's, it's later than usual. So I'm more paranoid than usual about waking up family. So now I'm going to be talking away from their bedrooms. Seems smart. Okay. So what's your answer? Wait a minute. You haven't said whether you have an answer. I don't want you to piggyback off my answer. I have an answer. You swear? Yes.

All right. I think his salary goes down. What's your answer? Huh. I think up. Yeah. I think you're wrong. Okay. And I believe I will convince you of this. Okay. Okay. Not just because they signed them, but because it's more exciting to think that way. Like as soon as you, you know, the, you know, the, I forget what the name of it is, but the effect where if you have, like if you're, if you spend days and days trying to decide

what car to buy and like two cars, you know, like a Jetta and a Civic seem totally identical to you and you just can't make up your mind. And then finally you make up your mind the The next day you forgot that you had any doubt and you're telling everybody how the Jetta is the best car in the world. And you, you're in making the decision, you, you become extremely certain about it. I just feel like, uh, GMs probably all think that the players that they're signing are, are, are upside. They sign them because they think that they have all this extra upside.

Um, and if you take away the excitement of the upside, I the upside, I know that the certainty of it is very attractive too. And I know that there's a fear that everybody they sign is going to turn out to be broken. But I believe that the effect of wanting upside would be greater. But that's just sort of some weird feeling I have. I think the true answer to this, the logical answer, the factual answer that you can't dispute, is that the team that signs a player is the one that thinks the most highly of him. And so you can have 29 teams that think he's going to do worse than the 30th does, but you only need the one team that thinks he's going to do better. And so if all teams knew that he was going to do exactly that, then there would be no 30th team that overrates him. Indisputable, Ben. It's indisputable. You cannot dispute this. I think I can.

Go for it. Well, I don't know whether Burnett actually ended up with the highest bidder. In his case, it doesn't seem that way or it doesn't it doesn't seem as if the Phillies are necessarily the team that thinks he will be better than every other team thinks he'll be um it seems like like geography played a part probably um yeah I think you're getting I I don't think that's the spirit of the question. uh would not be so high on him that they wouldn't you know that it wouldn't that it would think that he is definitely as valuable as a 200 inning pitcher with a three and a half era i think with a with a pitcher i i mean i i think every team factors in the uncertainty or the injury risk likelihood pretty highly.

And he asked whether there'd be a difference in percentage increase between pitchers and hitters. I think there would be, certainly, that pitchers would benefit from this more because there is more uncertainty about pitchers staying healthy. more uncertainty about pitchers staying healthy. I think that certainty, I think you're underrating the value of that certainty. But doesn't the question presume that, I mean, 3.50 ERA in 200 innings or whatever he said, that, I feel like the way the question is asked presumes that that is his his mean uh projection that yeah that he is as likely to be you know that if you average all of his possible performances together that's what he's going to be right so uh the upside and the downside is already baked into that and so that you know that's that is his estimated average performance. And I feel like if you ask all 30 GMs, though, to project that pitcher,

whether it's A.J. Burnett or just an abstract pitcher, you're going to have a lot more range. And it's the team that fancies him better than that that is going to sign him or that convinces themselves that they see upside that is going to sign him. And so if you take away that possibility, if you take away the disagreement about it, then who's going to be the winner's cursor? I don't think 200 innings can be the mean.

Do you feel that the question, question though the spirit of the question presupposes that uh i don't know i think it's i think it changes the answer for that to be possible or not i don't think it's possible to have a picture i think that i think that you and i are answering different questions that could be um so we've each given our answer though i feel like anybody who's listening and wants our perspective on this has a pretty good feeling about where we stand yeah okay then we can move on okay successful that was a successful email exchange. Partial, partial. All right. This one, let's see.

Eric Hartman asks, would it be pedantic to state more clearly that every single prospect's floor and many prospects' realistic floor is not a big leaguer? I feel in the prospecting world, echo chamber, the idea that most true prospects will be big leaguers is overstated. Your thoughts? That's a good point. Yes. Yeah, I guess it depends how much credit you want to give to the reader. And I guess that's what generally that's where pedantry comes in, is that you don't give the speaker credit for sort of common sense and you have to poke at the small details, even's uh there is a floor that is dark and tragic and goes to high a and and no further um so i think that eric's point is correct that maybe there is a tendency to overstate the worst case uh which brings up actually a question that we had last week where dan brooks asked if um

what what did dan brooks ask if prospect writers should regress to the mean more when they're stating the best case and somebody brought up a good point which is that um that um the prospects that we talk about are not actually like the median prospects. They're the top prospects. We're only really talking about the top prospects. And if you actually had a prospect writer describe all of the prospects in minor league baseball, all 6,000 minor leaguers, you would actually have a lot. You know, it might actually be a pretty good distribution. So I wanted to bring that up.

But yeah, I think that Ericic is right but it's probably not important yeah i i think that's probably right when when jason parks passed on that thing that i think it was a a scout or someone said about buxton that that his floor is tory hunter um and that's a really valuable player and that suggests that there is no possible way that he is not going to be a really valuable player, and we all understand that something could happen. He could contract an illness and not reach that floor. I mean, you know, right?

But that's, I guess, not that useful to us. We want to know what his his skill level projects to be reasonably. And that's sort of what the prospect writer is trying to capture with the floor idea. There have certainly been instances where a prospect writer will say that someone has a floor of something and that person doesn't reach that floor which contradicts the idea of a floor um but i think philosophically the floor and the ceiling are both in a sense best case scenarios they're both yeah they're both ceilings it's like what is the ceiling of his floor and what is the ceiling of his ceiling yes um and i'm okay with that because i i think i maybe like that i think it would be i mean really what would be the point otherwise every player's floor would

be identical right and that would be no fun can we go back to the first question for a second i'm really uh captivated by this question so aj Burnett's actual projection this year is 165 innings, 385 ERA. So ignore the $16 million. Ignore that the contract he actually signed. If there was a pitcher who was projected to 165 innings and 3.85 ERA, do you think that a team would sign him for more or less? Would his contract be higher or lower if instead of the mean projection, that was the only projection? In that case, I guess I could buy your argument. Sort of makes sense to me. You sound totally convinced.

Yeah, not totally. No. All right. Fair enough. I think I accept your position. I accept your concern. Okay. This one comes from Matthew.

Reading about all the latest extensions for young players, a question arose. What would it take for the pendulum to swing and teams to start eschewing long-term deals? Alternatively, what would it take for players to no longer want to lock themselves into these agreements? I realize that this is a very general question, but I'm curious to know your thoughts. You wrote about this once, didn't you? Well, the incentives of, particularly with pre-arbitration cases, the incentives are just overwhelmingly in favor of these happening. The incentives for the player and for the team both coincide in such a way that makes these extensions make a lot of sense. coincide in such a way that makes these extensions make a lot of sense. It's like asking what would it take, basically it's like saying what would it take for the pendulum to swing and nobody carries health, life, or auto insurance anymore.

Because that's essentially what it is, the teams are absorbing the risk in order to you know basically get a long-term gain on their money. So I mean the answer to that would be either the risk would have to get way too high or teams' financial, I mean, if teams didn't have any money, like if they just couldn't, there are lots of cases where you would like to invest in something, but you don't actually have the money to do it. So it doesn't matter how good an investment it is. If you can't marshal the resources to do it, then you can to do it. So it doesn't matter how good an investment it is. If you can't, you know, if you can't marshal the resources to do it, then you can't do it. So either teams would have to be so overextended on contracts that they couldn't even do these things that would save them

money in the long run, or something would have to happen to the game that would make players too risky. So you could, I don't know, of know of course another i guess a third option would be that the uh the system would change and so you wouldn't have the standard six years of club control three years pre-arb and all that i mean if if if that got changed to a different system then i don't i haven't thought how it would work out but that would of course change maybe some of the incentives but um what could happen to make young players riskier ben i guess if they outlawed tommy john surgery as unnatural as an unnatural advantage or if they well yeah yeah i don't i don't see that happening no uh if maybe if um i don't know i don't know it's a good question yeah uh but like uh didn't didn't dave i didn't i don't i

don't think i can't remember i don't think – didn't Dave Cameron write something about the Freddie Freeman deal and how it signified that these extensions are, like, catching up to market value? Yes, something like that. Uh-huh. So, you know, if players just started getting cocky you know what could happen is if if it became the norm for players to take out insurance contracts on their own careers or if they were you know that guy or as someone else asked us about the uh the company that is recruiting investors to yeah give uh yeah I was going to say that. Yeah. That basketball player?

Yeah, football players, right? People investing in their future earnings and giving them some amount of money up front. Yeah, so that could certainly do it. In fact, that probably should happen. The club should not be... In the ideal world, the club should probably not be the one benefiting from this.

The player and the club are, in in a sense in competition i mean one is management and one is is labor and it does kind of seem weird that the uh that there isn't a third party who uh steps in to kind of take away some of the conflict of interests there so uh yeah, maybe that will happen. I could see that happening. I could see in 15 years that being the norm. Every player who's a touted prospect has some sort of avenue for cost certainty that doesn't involve giving his club free labor. Yeah, I think that's probably likely. Okay. Reasonably likely. So that's the answer. Okay. Reasonably likely. So that's the answer.

Related question from Josh, who asks with the news that the Angels are going to discuss a long-term contract with Mike Trout. I was wondering what you guys believe his agent should ask for in exchange for buying out his free agent years. and the fact that position players are seen as more valuable than pitchers given the disparity in games played, Trout's age, and the rate of inflation in baseball, would $35 to $40 million per season be a reasonable number for Craig Landis to ask for after Trout's Arbiers? And if so, would it make sense for the Angels to agree to that number? After his Arbiers, so like for years 7 and 8? Yes, right.

So he's quite a year away from arbitration. Yeah, I mean, if I were Trout at this point, I wouldn't take any discount other than, you know, a normal player would take years before. Like, you know, like Justin Verlander signed a contract a couple years before his free agency, but, you know, he was a grown-up. He was no longer pre-Arb. So there's always like a discount when you, when you get an extension

before you actually have the leverage, um, cause the club is taking on some risk. But at this point, if I were trout, I would not sign any, any deal that sort of gave the classic young player discount for an extension. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm Mike Trout, there is almost no chance that I'm not going to have $15 million in 11 months and be rich for life. I don't think he has really very little uncertainty for his wealth. If I were him, I would just keep playing and take all the money and uh a non-discounted rate you would have to figure would i mean you probably would have to start around 35 right because we're talking about four years from now yeah would be his first free

agent year and uh he is the best player in baseball and he's young and he's a position player and all those things um yeah he might not be the best player in baseball at that point but um 35 million seems like a reasonable amount to expect the best player in baseball to get in four years with inflation maybe 40 and he's uh you know he's clearly the best player i mean he's like two or three wins better than anybody else at this point um but i don't know 40 seems a bit high i would think 35 yeah um yeah okay uh andrew says despite the fact that win loss record doesn't mean anything do you think the fact that tanaka was 24 and oh such such a perfect round 1,000 winning percentage, had anything to do with

either the hype of his arrival in the U.S., the perception of his skill set by fans, or the perception of his skill set by teams, and therefore the number of teams bidding and the price that they bid. I guess what I'm asking is, were he 24-1, would it make a significant difference? Everything you read about his 2013 starts up by saying that he had a perfect 24 and 0 record or something to that effect if he were 24 and 1 would the hype be as great uh i would say yes it would be as great yes i would say it would be exactly as great i do too and i do mainly because i don't think the hype was out of hand for him. To me, the hype was actually quite restrained for Tanaka. And I am, even though I know better, I feel somewhat emotionally moved by the 24-0 record.

And yet, you know, it didn't get out of hand. I mean, nobody was really suggesting he was better than darvish he like sort of came up a little bit but basically nobody said that and most of what you heard is he's a number two um or so so uh yeah i think that the hype actually the hype earlier was a little bit more but as teams started getting involved like when it was just this abstract player who was going to be available and so much of the analysis was by us you know people like people like you or john marosi or whatever um there was more focus on the 24 now but once teams got involved and started having to decide what to bid and then some of the analysis was was um

uh informed by what clubs were saying or or what was going on in the thought process you sort of saw it drop off i think and um expectations got a little bit more reasonable so let me ask you this if he'd gone 12 and 13 then would it have been different? Yeah, I think so. Because 24-1 is amazing. Right, if he had been 24-1, you still would have seen every article lead off with the fact that he was 24-1. They're both amazing records. So 24-1, yes. What about 21-3? I would say no difference from the team interest level.

Maybe a tiny difference in the media interest level. Yeah, I think that 22-2, no difference in the media level. 20-4, definite difference in the media level. 21-3, I could go either way. So 12-13, difference on the team level? I'll say yes. I think so too. And I think that nobody would admit it.

I don't know whether the max bid would be much different. I think it would be subconscious, but it would. Yeah, I agree. Josh says, listening to episode 381 currently and it reminded me of a theoretical question I had a couple years ago while at a very empty PNC park if you have a league average team

that would under normal circumstances finish 500 but you auctioned off the opportunity for a fan to manage the team for a single game and did this for all 162 games of the season what would the team's record be at the end of the year? That's interesting because, um, uh, so we generally agree that

a manager has, um, you know, some important role in, in keeping the team, in doing managerial things behind the scenes, not just pulling the strings. So in this question, is it assumed that there is no authority figure in the clubhouse? Yeah, I would presume that it's a fan pulling the strings, making the in-game tactical decisions,

but there would still be someone keeping order in between games and ensuring some sort of consistency. And I would expect a lot of resentment from the players. Would you expect some resentment? I think so. Particularly if a player, I mean, you know, pulling a pitcher, for instance, you know, you want to be the accountant who goes out and pulls I think so. how they were used, about players being pinch hit for, about veterans who don't feel like they should be platooned, all those sorts of things. And so the question is how dysfunctional could a team, how much damage could a team's dysfunction on those lines get? From a strategic standpoint, I would bet, just strategic, even if the players had no idea this was happening,

and so an auctioner, a bidder was pulling the strings but nobody knew, I would say, I want to say four wins. Hmm. I'd go higher. Yeah, I want to say four wins. Hmm. I would, I'd go higher. Yeah, I could go higher. I could go higher, but then I'm imagining Tom Tango doing a post and showing that it would only be one and a half and the math would all make sense.

Yeah, I did. Like, because how many truly difficult decisions there are. I did an article a few years ago or a couple years ago where I surveyed front office people and I asked them what they thought the difference between an average manager and a completely optimal makes every correct decision, what the difference in wins over a full season would be. And the average response was three wins. And did that include, so that was just from the X's and O's? Yes. Right, it was assuming the same leadership and charisma and all that. The difference between an average manager

and a totally optimal in-game manager was three wins. I think it would be high because, I mean, even if the auctioneer ensured somehow that the winner of the auction was acting in good faith, that there were no trolls who won the bidding and started a reliever and put a terrible lineup in the field, everyone is trying to win and everyone knows a decent amount about baseball. I think the fact that no, no fan gets to do this for more than one game in a row,

that it's a different person every day. Yeah. I think, I think there'd be a huge adjustment even in terms of making the routine move. If you had a fairly knowledgeable fan and you gave him or her a full season in which to manage games, maybe by the end of that season that person would be as adept at making the standard bullpen changes and pinch hitting moves and all of those things as a regular manager would be. But if it's always your first game, then I think a lot of people would be overwhelmed by that. The game would move more quickly for them than it does on TV. They would not be prepared.

The armchair managers who are sitting at home watching on TV and saying he should have put this reliever in would not have that reliever warmed up at the appropriate time. That's true. The warming up at the appropriate time, that actually would probably be the most difficult thing is anticipating and having a reliever on. That's a good point. I'm of three minds here. One is, I know, I know this is how hard it is to manage i can't even manage a simple fake question um one he would have a bench coach and a pitching coach so it's not like this person would have would just be left alone totally right and so this person could be prodded could seek counsel yes and could be reminded of things. So that would probably avoid, again, assuming good faith, that would assume sort of some of the disastrous scenarios you might imagine.

Two, however, I am now thinking about a lot of people I know who consider themselves knowledgeable baseball fans and watch games, and yet I consider their opinions about baseball to be ghastly and their knowledge to be relatively talk radio level. And I do think that those people are good people, and I like them, and they enjoy the game, and they add a lot to my experience. However, I can imagine some crazy opinions being put in play because that's what it is more than anything.

It's, they have crazy opinions. and, but my, on the third hand, your, uh, or my,

of my third mind, your manager's, uh, differential, the three game gap between best and worst, I think maybe suggests it should be four or should be something less. Well, three games, that was the differential between average and perfect, not best and worst.

Oh, okay. Well, then never mind. Four seems a little low. However, I would say that those three games worth of wins are... Once you get past those three games, I would think... What am I trying to say? There are probably three games worth of difficult decisions to be made in the course of a season. Maybe there are six games worth of difficult decisions to be made in the course of a season maybe there are six six games worth of difficult decisions to be made but then it's not like it's

not linear after you get through those difficult decisions it becomes exceptionally easy i would think i mean it's not like like like you know like every fan knows who, you know, who the who's better, Troy Tulewitzki or Jordan Pacheco. So it's not like you're going to like get down to the level where people are putting Jordan Pacheco in instead of Troy Tulewitzki. Right. Right. And so I don't know, like the difference between. I don't know. I'm just going to say I feel like I've made my point.

I feel like I should rephrase that. I feel like I'm not going to make my point no matter how long I talk. That's what I meant to say. I feel like I have demonstrated my inability to make this point. Okay. Well, I think it's a significant difference. I think if it's an 81-win team with an average major league manager, then I think with the different manager every day

yes i think it's a i think it's a 72 win team i'm totally fine with that i could go as low as 66 actually i could i could imagine it getting really ugly yeah uh okay um or not i could totally imagine 70 70 76 too i'm not totally convinced about yes i could too um okay uh this one let's see this this will probably be quick uh this one's from matt in light of the recent cubs podcast hypothetically if you were theo epstein would you seriously consider making a Javier Baez-led package in an attempt to acquire Giancarlo Stanton and sign him long-term, especially considering we reasonably expect Starlin Castro to rebound to a roughly three-win level and that he's under contract until 2020, when he'll be only 30 years old. Other than the Red Sox, the Cubs are one of the few teams

that have the prospects to acquire Stanton and money to extend him, especially considering that the Cubs have depth in the left side of the infield and Baez is still risky with plate discipline concerns. He could be Pedro Alvarez 2.0 for all we know. I would say that there is a way that that trade might make sense, but that I probably wouldn't make that trade, given that if I'm Theo Epstein, I would expect to get my right fielder of the future out of either Soler or Bryant, who might end up in right field. And given that, and given the imbalance between positional talent and pitching talent in their system, I would hold on to Baez. And if I were to trade him, it would probably be for a pitching-based package. Yeah, I feel like the outfield is not where the Cubs need the most help in 2016.

I also don't think that we should assume that Starling Castro is necessarily a shortstop forever or in 2016. I don't think that I would rule out trading Starling Castro either. And I also will say, though, in general, I have no idea how to value prospects versus players in these trades. I mean, I do. I know how to do it. But I feel like it's so hard to know how teams prioritize what they need given their situation. And it's very inconsistent. We don't know how they evaluate these prospects. We don't know how they view the true value of each player.

And so when you start making fake trades and it becomes prospect for player or prospects for player, I just never know what's too much. I don't think anybody does it. Like you sort of, when a trade happens, you sort of know it when you see it somewhat. But it's really hard to know what a team would trade for what. Yeah, I think it's probably easy to overestimate the uncertainty

with a guy like Baez, who is pretty close to Major League ready, who's been in AA, who's a position player, who is rated by everyone who rates prospects as one of the top couple guys. I think the fact that he is a prospect and that we haven't seen him in the majors makes it easy to say, well, who knows what could happen? He's a prospect. Prospects bust. But he's close. So there's risk there. I mean, even Pedro Alvarez 2.0 is not the worst thing in the world. I mean, if he's a shortstop and can hit like Pedro Alvarez, that's pretty good. pretty good. So it's not so much the uncertainty of the prospect. I feel fit. I actually feel like I like it's, it's pretty easy to, to estimate what a prospects, um, you know, mean production is going to be just based on where he's ranked and that, and how old he is. It's more, it's more doing the, you know, the six years versus three and the, you know, know like do you discount the wins in year six compared to year one you probably should because a win today is probably worth more than a win in six years when

you don't know your situation and i don't know i just find it like when i did that thing on fake john carlos stanton trades trade rumors or like trade proposals like a year ago i when it when when it was like when i started trying to do ones that were like for prospects i just gave up and i i think i just put like trade him for prospects and like let the teams figure out what the appropriate number of prospects or the appropriate level of prospects is yeah right it's hard anytime you have like a one year of club control for five years of club control it's very difficult to do i mean you know yeah that's all um like nobody will ever be nobody will ever be able to decode the adrian gonzalez trade from from boston to the dodgers

no like it's just it's it's so complicated to have all those salaries and all those different years of service time, and you don't even know which dollars the Dodgers are just taking on because they have to, and which ones they're happy to pay the guy, and then the prospects involved. I mean, the service time things make these trades very complicated and very hard to anticipate. They're not difficult to judge after the fact, but they're extremely hard to anticipate. They're not difficult to judge after the fact, but they're extremely difficult to anticipate. Yes. That's what I mean. Yeah. Okay. One I wanted to answer from Matt who asked, do you think we will ever see cyber spying in baseball? With cyber spying being a popular topic and with baseball

becoming more data driven, I feel that it is inevitable that a team would attempt to steal or damage the data of another team. Do you see an age of high tech hijinks in baseball's future and what form would it take? Oh, so like if a team were able to sabotage the other team's track man, for instance. Yeah, it could be that or it could be, you know, you're able to to access another team's internal system somehow. Gain access to their server, read their scouting reports, you know, look at their their proprietary projections, all of those things. Or or wipe them out, steal them, and then delete them, or just monitor them. That's interesting. I wonder if the incentive is great enough. If you were caught doing that, the penalties would be pretty severe. So the question is, how much, I guess, how much variation in knowledge, what the knowledge gap is

between the smartest team and the least smart team? Would it be worth the risk for the information gleaned. Because if you're just stealing one team's information and one team's evaluations and scouting reports, I guess you're sort of doubling your knowledge in a way, which would be valuable. So, I mean, you could kind of uh imagine it happening it's interesting to think about i don't know uh practically speaking how how likely that is um i don't think i i don't think clubs would generally be that interested in like they might it, it would be fun to steal another team's information. But my suspicion is that if, if they, you know, if they did manage to get some club's information and it clashed with what they already had believed or what they had already found or scouted, I think they would just go with their own. My, my, my guess, like, I think that teams are much more concerned about keeping their

own secrets than about actually getting anybody else's i think there's like a sort of a paranoia that um that a lot of clubs have about protecting their information but i just don't get the sense that any of them care that much about what other people are doing like there's a little bit of curiosity there but um but not i don't know that clubs seem to clubs anyone i've ever talked to has felt pretty confident that they're you know that they're doing it right does it surprise you that we never see a a disgruntled uh employee or a disgruntled former employee just leak a whole bunch of sensitive stuff just just put a team's scouting

reports out there just just well they do seasons worth of data or something yeah uh not i i guess not really because we who want i mean every they nobody's obligation is to us it's to staying in the game and having a job and so you gotta you to, you got to be part of the club. You got to act, you got to act like everybody in the club. That's, that's how you stay in the game. You act like everybody else. So it would look really bad if anybody did that, but they do. I mean, if a.

It would have to be someone who's just fed up with working in baseball and doesn't want to do it anymore. Yeah. And even then, like, do those guys really exist uh i don't know and of course there are you really don't like you don't see you don't generally see people in baseball burning bridges at all like in any way the only time you do is when it's a crazy person like jose canseco or or pete rose but um you there's you just don't see people going off you know doing crazy things in any fashion however as far as like as far as sort of stealing stuff or i don't see people going off, you know, doing crazy things in any fashion. However, as far as like as far as sort of stealing stuff or I don't stealing is maybe not the right word.

But, yeah, when a team hires another team's double A coach, the other team's double A coach brings all the paperwork and immediately shares it with the club. So they are all doing that. Everybody is bringing their old paperwork to their new job. Yeah, true. Okay. All right. Derek Jeter. What about Derek Jeter?

We're going to hear about Derek Jeter now. Oh, well, yeah. All right. A quick answer. Andrew wanted to know why quarterbacks don't blow out their elbows. It's a different throwing motion, right? Yeah, I think it's, I did find a study that said there, like, between 1994 and 2008, there were, like, 10 UCL injuries in quarterbacks,

and most of them were able to be treated without surgery. Like, nine of the people returned without ever having an operation. I think, yeah, I think it's a combination of things. I think it's the different throwing motion. I think, I mean, quarterbacks tend to hurt their shoulders more so than their elbows. I think it probably has to do with the different size and weight of the ball. You're with a football, which is bigger and heavier. You're not accelerating and decelerating and stressing your arm quite as much.

You're also just not making nearly as many throws, I would think. There are only, you know, 16 games or maybe 20 if you're counting preseason games and some playoff games. And the average quarterback makes like 30 passes in a game, something like that, and not even— They're throwing constantly, though, right? Don't they throw every day? Yeah, they throw between games. But you don't have the concentration of throws, I don't think, and the max effort nature of it.

So I don't know whether it's more the repetition or the mechanics, but both play a role. the repetition or the, the mechanics, but, uh, both, both play a role. Okay. So, uh, send us emails for next week. So at podcast, the baseball perspectives.com,

uh, please join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And please rate and review us, uh, and subscribe to us on iTunes. Uh, so now you will hear me talking to Ricky Smith about his close encounter with Derek Jeter story,

which I enjoyed very much. And we hope that you have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back with new show on Monday. So on Wednesday, Derek Jeter announced his retirement and my Twitter timeline was quickly filled with tributes to his greatness, his legacy, his character. There was only one man with the bravery to swim against that tide and insist that Jeter's career was not something to celebrate, and that man was Ricky Smith,

a comedian and a writer for Adult Swim's Black Dynamite, and he joins me now. Hey, Ricky. How's it going? Do you guys have any applause noise or anything like that? Maybe we can add some. If you deserve it, we'll see. Definitely want some of that. Let me back you up. I see and we're excited that he's retiring because it gives a level playing field

for the normal man to not have what happened, what we're about to discuss. So I'm actually as good or sweet, as's bittersweet that's a good point okay so so tell us uh so what is your grudge against derrick cheater 2003 uh many many moons ago uh i i met a young lady this is before the catfish and the you know you can do background checks per se on people but i met a young lady on myspace if you will and i'd never done anything like this before but i was in cleveland ohio at the time and she was actually in new york city and uh we've been communicating back and forth and i'm a big baseball fan um and it just so happened that the Cleveland Indians were playing a series against, a four-game series against the Yankees.

And, you know, like anybody would, I'm a young guy, not much money, but I have a corporate account company at the time. So, you know, I make my way, I get a flight, and I get to the hotel, not presuming anything, but, you know, just excited. Me and this girl going back and forth, I think for like six to seven months at this time. Wow, okay. So you put some work in. Yeah, it was a lot of work. I mean, it was like, you know, am I a fool?

Am I stupid? You know, the first phone call, you don't know, you know, pressure and this and that. So I get to New York, you know, she picks me up from the airport and she was living at home with her parents at the time. I think she was in grad school. Not exactly sure, but She picked me up from the airport and she was living at home with her parents at the time. I think she was in grad school. Not exactly sure, but

she picked me up. We go to dinner. We go to Bahama Breeze, a chain restaurant to that magnitude. It's that place where they're wearing flair, if you will, on their uniforms.

I think we were doing well at the time. I think we even held hands, maybe did the awkward kiss where you just get out of the way, and she tells me that we should go to the nightclub. So-and-so DJs there, some people there, et cetera, et cetera. So being the tool or being the guy that I am at the time, I'm going, all right, sure. And we get to this club, and, you know, I've been places.

I went to college in Atlanta, New York is still a different beast. So I get there, and some of the Yankees players are there, and, you know, I'm excited because I actually see Derek Jeter. So I was like, wow. I'm actually more excited to see him than I think she is. I don't think she relatively is at the time. And this is prime Derek Jeter at the time. This is age 29.

Oh, yeah. He could do no wrong. This is before the hair started thinning. Right, right, right. The full set of hair. So I'm excited. I'm like, you know, there's Jeter. You know, tell her who he is.

And blah, blah, blah. He comes over. And, you know, I'm excited. So as a gentleman, I introduce him to her. And, you know, we start talking they start talking well talking in the group and I think either I went to the bathroom or somehow which was my big mistake looking back I left to go to the restroom or something I'd agree and I leave them and I come back and and you know I see them leaving this is summer so they don't have put in coats and I

don't they're going to smoke but in my head I'm you know this can't happen because you know Derek Jeter's a man this girl you know likes me or doesn't like with me right now so you know and 10-15 minutes go by and I realize they're not back

you know you don't want to believe it's like one of those like sixth sense at the end of the movie or you know where don't want to believe it's like one of those like six cents at the end of the movie or uh you know where you're like wait like wait did that you're replaying it and you kind of looking left looking right and this is for the days of smartphones so there's no way to do the fake texting i can't act like i'm you know in my phone it's just me and literally i feel like four thousand hundred people million people are staring at me. They just saw what happened. And, you know, I couldn't be mad per se at her because if I was a woman,

I probably would have left with Derek Jeter. I couldn't be mad at him because she was kind of a hot chick. So I can only be mad at myself. I'm just sitting there and I'm, you know, acting like I'm enjoying myself and that I really wanted to stay and that, you know, I'm enjoying this club and I'm you know acting like I'm enjoying myself and I really wanted to stay and that you know I'm enjoying this club but I'm really not and how long did you sit there before you accepted what had happened it was probably the longest five minutes of my life I mean felt like it was like hours but here's the thing that I didn't even tweet about is that I actually was

jealous because I would have loved to gone and not you know in a gay way but I would have loved loved to going back to his house like I wanted to hang out with Barry Jeter like I want the trophies or whatever he had to like show they could have hooked up which I realized after so that five minutes me waiting I realized after about four minutes and you know 50 minutes and two 50 seconds into it she's my ride I actually have never been to New York before. So I'm like, not only did he steal my girl, he also stole my ride, which to the point where I'm like, they could have just dropped me off back at my hotel. Like, this is just bad.

Like, this is not going well. And at that moment of frantic, I see the cocktail waitress. This is, like, really before bottle service. But I see cocktail waitress come over and go, go you know they do that whisper where they go no sir mind you know I quote I'm sorry your card is declined you have another one point everyone's been I don't care whether it's college you've been there you go you get a whole you know fake pat down where you go oh let me um oh that's weird I don't it has been acting funny no one did it have this let me let me, oh, that's weird. Yeah, it has been acting funny. No wonder it hasn't.

Let me see another card. Mind you, I had a card limit on it. So I couldn't spend X amount of dollars, and I reached that with a bottle of champagne that I thought we were going to split. So now, just to recap, Jeter takes my girl. I have no ride home, and now my car is a climb. So it's just all bad. It went from, you know, an hour before,

we're lovey-dovey at the Ruby Tuesdays or Shoney's or wherever we are and now it's just like I'm stuck in New York City. I feel like the world is looking at me

and I have like $4.72 on my name. You think the least he could have done is pick up the check because you figure that she probably

got the gift basket the next day. Exactly, which she could have even split with me. Sure. I mean, he took the girl and he fed her. He didn't even have to take her to dinner.

I fed him for her. I did all the hard work. I even got her a little tipsy. It's like, you know, the hyena or whatever comes in and swoops out the food after lying in all the work. I was his wingman for that night and just swoops off the food after you know lying at all the work so i just think that i was his wingman for that night and i didn't even get a thank you so you didn't actually see the the pickup take place so to speak it was sort of

i mean you're you're a baseball fan you you probably know that the famous fielding plays in jeter's career when he comes out of nowhere and he suddenly he's diving into the stands or he's flipping a ball when he's completely out of position. And then after the fact, you realize, oh, Derek Jeter was there. So that must have been – It's like the WWF or WWE where the guy comes in, and he hits the guy, and the guy turns around, and he literally doesn't know what happened. And it was like I got blindsided.

Like I said, it would have been okay if I got a ride home. I was going to give him – looking back, he had a lot of outs. He could have split the tab, like you said. He could have given me a ride home. You know, he could have even let me go to his house and maybe stay in the guest room, you know, or at least let me get, you know, part of the next morning bag. I could have got a bat or a jersey

or at least something commemorating, you know, the experience. All I got was repressed memories until I see the retirement tweets. And he's trending. And then it just flowed like diarrhea. It flowed like diarrhea. Yeah, we could feel the pain as you tweeted the story. So did you just put your tail between your legs and go back home? Did you hang around town for a while?

Well, I actually had to take the train. I took a bus to the train, which you don't know how humble you are, leaving a club dressed up to try to figure out where you're going. And actually, because my card was over, I gave them as much as I had in the card. I actually only could stay in my hotel one more day. And so I actually looked up some relatives, and this is like old school. Looked up some relatives. I had to act like I actually was in town to visit them in New York.

And I think I ended up hanging out with my grandmother's sister, which would be my great aunt. Her neighbor was like 28 or 29, this, like, woman who smelled like mothballs, and it was all bad, but we ended up sightseeing. It wasn't good sightseeing. It was like, oh, this is the first trolley

that ever was produced. I was like, oh, this is why I came to New York. I'm so excited about this. It's funny, because I actually didn't watch baseball for two years, and I actually didn't go to New York

for another three or four years because of that whole experience. It was just too painful. Oh, it still hurts. Like even now, I don't know if you can hear it, but it's not, it hurts. But you know what's funny? We've all been there, whether it's been Derek Jeter, whether it's been a college roommate, whether it's been a best friend.

I think we've all experienced that moment where it's just like, okay, all right. You don't want to believe it. And even, you know, you're waiting, you're looking at your phone. Maybe she'll call tomorrow. Maybe, you know, maybe somebody got sick in her family. But no, no, I was jittered, if you will. Has this made you more wary of taking dates out, just fearing that Derek Jeter might be wherever you are? Yeah, well, I actually look at the schedule.

I actually know the Yankees schedule. I actually went to San Diego, NLA prior to coming post that. And actually, this farewell tour, I'm staying far away. Maybe the last day, the last city, you know, I'll show up. But no, I'm not even taking my mom or even, you know, remotely anywhere around anywhere in a hundred mile radius of the Derek Jeter. And after this happened, did you make any attempt to reconnect with your date or was that just, that was it? You know what, I like to say, and I said it to my friends,

that I did not call her, but she actually didn't return my calls. She kind of stopped it on her end. But I like to think that they're married and having kids, which I know is not true, but I would like to think down the road that's going to happen. Yeah, it could happen. In his retirement statement yesterday, he said something about how he wants to devote himself to starting a family. So maybe he will, maybe he'll call her up. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, yeah. I mean, maybe I will too. Or maybe I'll bring her to the club. Maybe I'll bring her to the club. And you know, maybe they can rekindle because of me.

And this time I learned, I'll just, you know, make sure I pay with cash beforehand on my tax. Because you're right. Once you're 40 and a former Yankees legend and a former earner of $250 million, you don't quite have the same club status that you once did. So he might have a tougher time. As much as I want to agree with you,

there's the thing that makes somebody cool. Derek Jeter's that guy. Even when you want to hate him, you can't. As much as I want to dislike him, he's still Derek Jeter. It doesn't even make worse that A-Rod's on the team. Now you really have a clear cut. You love everything about Jeter

and everything that's wrong, you go to A-Rod. Even as much as I want to be mad, like I said, I can only be mad at myself. I can only be upset with me bringing sand to the beach and knowing that it was the best beach of all time. The sand didn't want to leave with me. The sand was like, I'm happy here. So I picked up and walked away sandless.

You hear that acceptance a lot from his opponents who've been beaten by him on the field. You just kind of have to tip your cap and accept that you were beaten by the best. And I guess that's the feeling that you have here. I'm going to say that. If it was anybody to take my girl, I would be glad that they're... I'm actually proud, now that you put it that way. I would have no other person I would want to take my girl. And you can't be the only person who has had this experience over the years. My timeline, my timeline in the last 24 hours has exploded

with so many either guys like hanging there, my buddy happened to XYZ City. And for the record, the whole story is not to put them on blast or to locker room talk. But it was just something that was kind of funny. But, I mean, it's been known. I mean, he's a ladies' man. You know, ESPN, they just tweeted out his best, his nine best, you know,

scores, if you will. So, like I said, I feel privileged. I feel blessed. I would like to say that the woman, you know, made my say that the woman made my top three on MySpace. I think she's still there. I haven't been on MySpace in years, but I think she still resides there. Have you considered starting a support group of some kind for men who've had this experience? You know what? I might have to do it.

I think the first step was me telling the story, and now other men out there can know, and maybe women can know that they're not alone. So you're right. Maybe this was the beginning of something that helps, and maybe in this farewell tour in each city, he'll come speak to the different groups, the sport groups. I think that's a good idea, because you have to accept that it's not your fault. It's not your failing. It's not somewhere you went wrong. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's it. And you learn from that. You learn from that and you move on. And hopefully, you know, the people didn't slide too down, you know, the hard court.

I didn't go to, you know, hard drugs. I didn't, you know, drink. I didn't do things like that. But maybe some people did. And maybe they need a hug. Maybe they need somebody else, you know? things like that but maybe some people didn't maybe they need a hug maybe they need somebody else you know well i i applaud you for for getting over this setback in your dating life uh and for thank you for sharing your story with us uh and no thank you thank you like i said i

hopefully you know there's other people out there that can learn from this if it's not cheater you know maybe it's uh's, I don't know, Matt Chum. I think he's the guy in L.A. right now. Just to learn from my experience with the younger generation, the new up-and-coming baseball players, just be sure baseball players are in town three, four nights. Not like a basketball player in and out.

Baseball, they got a little time to romance your girl a little bit. And you've started a movement called Rake. Actually, indirectly. I'm not realizing this until right now, but I started this movement called Rana Exit Kindness Everywhere, which is Rake. On Twitter, it's Rake Now, R-A-K-E-N-O-W. And it's just doing kindness for somebody else. It's like being a forward movement,

but it's using the hashtag R-A-K-E, just doing something for somebody else it's like creating a forward movement but it's using the hashtag r-a-k-e just doing something for somebody else but indirectly i somebody actually tweeted me yesterday that me giving my girl the cheater might have been the first random act of kindness everywhere i performed that is a good that is a good point so you're uh so you you after after shows or when you're in a certain city, you just go out and do an act of kindness for someone? Yes. It could be not always charity. It could be handing out blankets to homeless people randomly. It could be buying Starbucks.

Last week, I actually went to a Target in Vegas and found two homeless people and gave them complete makeovers with clothes, toiletries, underwears, and then took them to a barber. So it's just doing something for somebody else. It won't pay a forward movement, but it's rake, but it's kind of in your face. So before it's anonymous, so I might buy 10 sandwiches for somebody. Somebody goes, you know what, I'm going to buy 20 sandwiches. So it's just doing a pay-it-forward movement, but it ended up being a bigger thing. And so Magazine picked it up. CNN is starting to do coverage and things like that.

So it's kind of a fun thing. I stress the random in random act of kindness. I'm actually looking this weekend to get a horse and ride around a couple of cities and do kindness on the horse. So it's still not holier than thou. It's saying just do something for somebody else. And is there a website where people can go to, to find out more about that?

It's www.ricknow.org. R-A-K-E-n-o-w.org and yeah that's what it is we do book tries we do plenty of tries we're actually doing donations

for other people who have been affected by things you know outfitting hospitals and things of that sort so yeah there it is

one of the actors from Moneyball Stephen Bishop is a big fan of he played David Justice and Moneyball is a big Rick supporter He played David Justice in Moneyball. He's a big Rick supporter.

We actually went to a couple of children's hospitals in L.A. and read it and hung out with the kids. There's a baseball connection there. He was upset that he had to pay for soft drinks in the A's clubhouse, as I recall, in that movie. Yes, he was. People can follow Ricky at Rickonia, R-I-i-c-k-o-n-i-a uh and does black dynamite coming back for a second season yeah i'm a writer in second season we're back uh this

summer it actually takes about people know it takes about 16 to 18 months to do a season so we actually worked on this season last uh february and they should be out this summer pretty funny stuff um the people who did boondocks kind of some people branched off and doing black dynamite so very excited for you guys to see we have some very interesting episodes that the 70s black exploitation kind of cartoon with it pretty funny pretty funny stuff cool all right people can hold I found on Twitter so that shows you the type of thing that social media, like yourself, us reaching out to social media is awesome.

And people can find that on Adult Swim. I wanted to bring out Derek Jeter and your date from backstage to surprise you, but I couldn't make it. It didn't come together in time. He's busy with his retirement and everything. I don't think I'm ready. I talked a big game, but I don't think I'm ready I talked a big game but I don't think I'm ready just yet for that alright thanks for joining us Ricky thank you so much for having me you have a good one