Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 416: Listener Emails: One Miguel Cabrera, Many Mike Trouts

Episode Date: March 28, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the Miguel Cabrera contract extension, bullpen usage, productive at-bats, multiple Mike Trouts, and more.

After the 2015 season, you're a free agent. How much would you like to stay in Detroit? How much? Too much. You like it here? I love it here. Good morning and welcome to episode 416 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Baseball Reference Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. Hello.

Hello. So the season preview series is over. Today we will do a listener email show, and then next week we'll somehow get back to coming up with our own topics. I was hoping we might have somebody on to help us preview every minor league affiliate team. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. We should probably do some of the top College World Series contenders also.

Okay, so we got a bunch of questions here. I guess we should start with the most topical one. Okay. Eric Hartman asks, can I request a hot take on the Miguel Cabrera extension? So that was a few hours ago. We both had time to heat up our takes um do you have a hot one uh i i mean i could i guess i could give you my my my closest thing to sort of like a like a hot pondering i have like a like a little bit of a hot pondering, I guess. Okay. It's not that hot, though. Do you have one?

I'll try. I'll try. We'll see. I'll just say, this is not a, I don't have a hot take. No. But I was thinking, you know, you and I have a mutual friend who's a little bit cranky and gets annoyed whenever

anybody says anything on Twitter. One of the things that he was complaining about today was that people were bringing up Miguel Cabrera's DUI a lot. People who were against the deal and who were finding various avenues to mock it, one of the ways that they mocked it is noting that Cabrera, he's got the DUI and he's got the domestic violence. And so while he seems like a really cool dude and everything, he's got a criminal record that suggests he's not. So our friend was saying that's silly

and that's dumb. And I think that to some degree, I mean, yeah, I'm kind of a little bit with that. However, the DUI is different, right? Because he checked into rehab and theoretically acknowledged being an alcoholic. And that to me seems like totally fair game. Fair game sounds wrong. Fair game is not the way to say it. Fair game sounds wrong. Fair game is not the way to say it, but it seems like if you're evaluating the risk of him in a 10-year context, his alcoholism is significant. Alcoholism is a disease. It's essentially something like having a health risk that pops up or threatens to pop up periodically. And it's, you know, it's really hard.

It's a real struggle to get through 10 years. And so I was thinking about that. But the thing is that we don't actually know if Cabrera is an alcoholic. You know, we know he checked into rehab. And we know he drank to excess. But, you know, not everybody who's a drunk is an alcoholic. And so maybe he checked into rehab because he, you know, that's what you do when you're a public figure and you get caught doing something bad like a DUI. Um, and so there's this weird situation where we don't know whether he's just sort of a bad guy who drinks and then doesn't think about the consequences.

Or if he's a guy who's got like a disease and that it takes him into dark and dangerous places that we should really sympathize with. And it's sort of like almost paradoxical where – not paradoxical. That's the word I'm going to use anyway. like almost paradoxical where, not paradoxical, that's the word I'm going to use anyway, where if he's an alcoholic, like an actual addict who struggles with this disease every day, I would have like a lot of sympathy for him. And generally, I wouldn't hold it against him all that much as a person, but I would definitely not want to give him a 10-year contract because like I would just know that he's got this one vulnerability in his life that would scare me.

But if he's just a bad guy who drinks and then puts people's lives in danger and doesn't actually have a disease, an addiction, I wouldn't be that worried about the 10 years because all sorts of bad dudes have been great at baseball for 10 years, but I would also think he was awful and and like you know just a just an absolutely rotten person so i don't know which one gives him more credit i guess is what i'm saying like i don't know i don't know which position is the one that that is unfair to him yeah i don't know i i mean how hot was that yeah anytime you end with i don't know, it probably wasn't that hot.

I mean, the DUI stuff didn't really even come to my mind. It would have eventually, but I wasn't looking at the tweets. So that wasn't the first thing that I thought about when I saw this, which is, you know, was, man, that's a lot of money and a lot of years. And it seems strange that they would have wanted to do this now. I mean, it's just, you know, the whole idea behind extending a guy before you have to, well before you have to, two full seasons before you have to, is that you get some sort of concession on your end. You get a discount of some kind. Maybe you

get him to sign for a shorter term deal or just less money per year. And it's, I mean, it's really hard to see this as any kind of discount, either in length or, or terms or just an average annual value. It's a, it's a ton of money. I can totally understand why the Tigers would want to keep him because, you know, they, I mean, not only has he been the best or second best player in baseball over the last three, four years. I mean, not only has he been the best or second best player in baseball over the last three, four years. I mean, I looked back as I was writing about this to see how far back you'd have to go for Miguel Cabrera not to be in the top five most productive players over a certain span of time. And you have to go all the way back to 2001 when Cabrera was an 18-year-old in A-ball for him not to show up as one of the five top players in baseball since that year. And, you know, I mean, he's coming off his best season, really. No signs of decline, at least while he was active.

I guess you could say that the groin injury was something that might not have happened to a younger player. And, you know, he played a career low number of games, which was not a low number because he's never been on the disabled list. And he had his best offensive season and his best overall season. So there's no sign of slippage yet. But it's just, you know, I guess I could live with this deal if he were a free agent today and he signed this contract.

I didn't hate the Cano deal for 10 years. It seemed okay to me. If you look at BP's stats, Cano has actually only been worth something like a win less than Cabrera over the last three years or so, once you factor in his defense and base running and position. But if they had given him this deal today and he was on the open market and he had other people bidding for him and there was pressure to get it done, then sure, as it is, two years before they had to extend him, I don't see it. I don't get it.

Yeah, I mean, it's mainly because it just doesn't seem like there's that much risk that his price is going to go up in the next two years. Right. That's mainly what it is. I mean, it's back to back MAP awards. He's never going to, you know, unless he wins a third one and another triple crown and gets even better somehow, he can't possibly raise his price at this point. better somehow. He can't possibly raise his price at this point. So let's imagine that somehow the Tigers had a way of looking into the future exactly 19 months or whatever to when his free agency hits. And so they have a, and like Jim Bowden has released his predictions of what all the free agents are going to get. So they know exactly what he's going to get because Bowden's uncanny.

And so they basically have this decision where they can sign him now for all that money, or they can know in two years what he's going to get as a free agent, if he is a free agent. I don't know if this hypothetical is going to have any logical consistency to it. But what I'm getting at is maybe his price goes up as a free agent and after two more years of excellence, maybe his price goes up like what? Like $30 million or $60 million or like $2 million or whatever. How much more? I mean at the same time, he's getting older every year. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, so if he were a free agent now, though, he'd get certainly more than eight years and $240,000, don't you think?

Yeah. Or whatever. What is he getting? What is the extension worth exactly? Well, it's eight years on top of the two years he already has. So eight years and how much money? It's $248 for those additional eight. And then there are vesting options, which I guess we don't know yet what the terms of those are.

But if those two vesting options do vest, it would take the total to 12 and 352 counting the next two years. Let's keep this simpler. Okay. So eight years, 248 is basically what they're paying him for the extension. So let's say he had two kind of MVP caliber years in a row right now. What would he get as a free agent, as a 33-year-old hitting the open market, and with inflation perhaps going further? He wouldn't get more than eight years, right?

I don't think so, no. Okay, so eight years, and is it conceivable that he'd be getting 35 at that point a year 35 million annual value i guess so i mean i don't want to extrapolate i don't want to extrapolate from the amount that prices seem to go up this offseason because i don't know how many teams have now signed their big tv contract it seems like probably most of them have at this point so the the prices probably won't keep going up and up At the same rate But yeah alright

So I mean it's 31 8 years 248 So I guess if there's some inflation In the next two years And he's coming off two more seasons Just like the ones he's had Sure maybe So you'd end up having to commit 30 million more dollars the next two years and he's coming off to more seasons just like the ones he's he's had sure maybe so you'd end so you'd end up having to commit 30 million more dollars and i feel like

i would i feel like if i were the tigers i would happily spend 30 million more like to me the giving up two years of of uh of observation and you know waiting out to see how he you know how he does physically. Maybe he doesn't have those two MVP caliber years. That weight would certainly be worth the $30 million that I'm theoretically saving by signing him early. $30 million is not even close to what I would value the two years of waiting at. Worst case, waiting costs them 30 million dollars like like if they wait and then they give him a blank check at the end and say we'll match anything we'll give you more

you know worst case is 30 million dollars now maybe worst case isn't 30 million dollars more maybe worst case is 100 million more maybe the dodgers and the yankees bid him up to you know infinity we we don't know but if we assume that if they had waited two years, they would have ended up giving him up to $30 million more than they got, that seems like a pretty lousy trade-off for taking on all this extra risk two years early. That's all. Yeah. And I can see why they would feel that they have to get something done if they think that there's a good chance that Scherzer is going to leave. And, of course, they rank 27th on our organizational rankings and on our 25 and under talent rankings. And, you know, they've just made the playoffs and won the division three years in a row with a team that's built around his bat and many other bats and arms also.

But he's been their, their best player. So I can see why you kind of look at the age of the roster and the, the lack of star caliber replacements. And then you start eyeing the twins farm system and the Royals farm system, and you could get kind of paranoid about how things will look for the Tigers in a couple years. And maybe you get antsy and you want to just get this done. And, you know, maybe you figure that it helps you recruit other free agents or something, just knowing that Cabrera is going to be there for the next decade. But, yeah, it doesn't seem like enough of a possible advantage in any way to make it make sense to me. Okay.

All right. That was the closest we come to hot takes. Okay. Let's do Matt's question. Matt says, the NBA is always fighting to raise the age of incoming players. The logic is fairly simple. The higher the age, A, the more information teams have before making a big investment, and B, the closer to a player's prime is the first contract, so less

is spent on sub-prime years. MLB teams seem to have it the other way around, preferring to pay big money to a still uncertain prospect whenever possible, given he's got the skill set. It could be a matter of the NBA not having a strong farm system, but if so, it would seem that they'd just go ahead and make one. Seems either it has to do with respective natures of the two sports, or one of the two approaches is wrong. I certainly don't expect you to get into why the NBA does what it does, but what are your thoughts on the matter from Major League Baseball's side? Well, baseball teams all think that they're much more responsible with pitchers and that they much prefer to get guys early because then they can start working on molding them earlier. They can work on protecting them earlier. They can sort of just get them into a professional environment much earlier.

And so they all think that it's much better for the players' development to have them in the system. So I don't know if that cancels out, outweighs the benefit of getting three extra years to let the players' labrums and elbows explode on their own so that they don't end up drafting those guys. But I think that's why teams are happy to take on the extra risk and sign guys earlier. The other thing is that the investment for all but a few of these guys, the investment is really low. I don't know exactly what NBA players get when they get drafted,

but I know that, well, it seems to me that they get paid more, right? We don't know the answer to that. What am I saying? I can't help you there. But also, there's a place for them where there's not really a place for the NBA guys. There's not a player development system where you can shuttle all your not quite ready players um you're you just have to put them on your basically on your your team's roster whereas in baseball there's like a whole structure set up where the players can be nurtured and you know you they get um

uh you know there's businesses that depend on these players being out there. So, yeah, I mean, it's a system that sort of seems to work fairly well for everybody. It's almost like this is college for players, right? Like, this is where you learn to be a man and where you learn to do the things that normal people do in college you get educated um all right uh let's do this question from andy uh it comes with a picture which no one listening can see but it is a picture taken in the the texas rangers dugout i believe a few years ago, that says the Texas Rangers productive team plate appearance system. And it lists eight ways to have a positive team at bat, a hit, a walk,

a hit by pitch or catcher interference, a sack fly, a sack bunt, advancing the lead runner via an out, advancing the lead runner via an error, which is an interesting one. Eight pitch at bat is the last one and that the team goal is to accrue 17 at bats in the course of a game that uh that meet these standards for a productive plate appearance or 17 play appearances so um andy asks uh there must be another way to express how to have a productive at bat i was wondering if you could name your eight your top eight ways to a productive at bat and he lists his uh which is hit walk hit by pitch sack fly score run on ground out move runner to third with fewer

than two outs catcher's interference or reach base via error so i I don't think I would have eight, first of all. Yeah, you don't need eight. No, it doesn't have to be eight. You could just change your scoring scale somehow. I mean, some of these, to me, seem either not particularly productive or they're pretty much out of the batter's hands. I mean, I'm not going to give a guy credit for a catcher's interference.

I'd probably just take that out of the total. And the other things, I mean, on the Rangers. You don't give a batter credit for catcher's interference? I think that catcher's interferences are probably, like, off the top of my head, I would guess that they are 80% quarterly to the hitter and like 20% to the catcher. Yeah, I kind of remember it. I think Jeff Sullivan did a post on which hitters had the most of them. I did an annotated box score once on that too, and somebody had counted them.

I forget who. Sorry, I can't give credit to him. And it's the same leaders every year like you know like 70 of catcher's interferences in a year come from like one guy basically one hitter all right well fine i'll give them that it doesn't come up often um but yeah i don't know at the the Sabre Analytics Conference, Manny Acta was talking about how after he sort of had his sabermetric conversion at some point in the middle of last decade, suddenly it bothered him when players would celebrate a sack fly. You know, they'd come back to the dugout and they'd, you know, get backslaps or whatever or, you, or some guy grounding out or whatever, and he would feel like it hadn't been a productive at-bat,

but it was still being celebrated as one. So, I mean, the seventh one on the Rangers list, advanced lead runner via error, is a strange one. Yeah, so the thing about it is not just that you don't necessarily need eight, but if they're not all equal, anything that sort of counts unequal events as equal is not quite as specific of a measurement as I would like, right? I mean, if the... So let me give you...

First off, let me tell you a little background about this, because I actually have a little background. So this is actually, this was a Rangers thing that was developed when Scott Service was there as the director of player development, and there's a pitching equivalent, and it actually started with a pitching equivalent or a defensive equivalent, which is free bases. And it was how many, they count how many free bases the team gives up. And a free base was defined as, you know, like a runner advancing on a throw or a walk or, you know, anything where like basically the batter didn't have to hit a line drive to move the runners up. And so this came from his uncle, who was the head baseball coach at Creighton

and has been for a really long time. He used that for defense. They found that if you give five or fewer free bases, you win 70% of time and so they would use that to show their team basically to create a very simple narrative for each game so they could tell the team the next day like you know in a very quick and easy way here's how we did and it gave the team sort of some things to focus on in a way of crystallizing whether they played well the day before so then they needed something on the offensive side and so when when they hired Clint Hurdle to be, I think, their minor league hitting coordinator or maybe he might have been their hitting coach at the major league level. He and service worked on this in a Starbucks in Denver.

I'm looking at my notes right now. So specific. Yeah. Yeah. my notes right now uh so specific yeah yeah uh and uh so a hurdle came up with the idea of the productive team plate appearance and it was the same thing so if you get 17 in a game they found you win you know like an equal amount of time so then every day they would uh in the the next day they'd go over the previous game and they'd, here's how many free bases we gave up, here's how many productive team plate appearances we gave up. So now they're doing it with the Angels, too, and Alden Gonzalez, who writes wonderfully about the Angels for MLB.com,

just wrote a couple days ago about this productive team plate appearances thing in the Angels' side. So that's where it comes from. And yeah, I mean, it's just that like the the idea that okay if you get 17 of these in a game you're 70 likely to win um but you know like all 17 aren't created equal if you if you know five of them are home runs you'll probably win even if you only get six right so it it feels like like i think it was bill james who said something about how like like the last thing the world needs is another offensive metric like another hitting metric

and uh it does feel like uh you know any any idea you have for a hitting metric probably is not going to do much more than what already is out there. But if it tells a story to the players, I think that's really what it's for. The idea is not so much that... I don't feel like this is so much used for them as an assessment tool. It's much more used as a training tool. You sort of promote whatever it is that you're counting and when you tell the team that you're counting this thing then it puts this in their

mind and tells them that it's an important thing and then it gets them behind it so they want all these things to be things that hitters are kind of aware of and trying to do. Theoretically, it keeps people maybe more tuned into the game. Maybe there's some sort of team spirit aspect where they're all keeping track of this and competing. Yeah, and if a hitter is hitting 230 and you don't want them to get too down on it, you can point out, oh, well, you've got, you know, you've had a lot of productive team player appearances

in the last three weeks. So, you know, it gives you, like, from a player development standpoint, it gives you some options. Chris, some of these things, I mean, you're counting all of them equally. So, you know, as you said, I mean, a triple counts as much as a bloop single or a home run counts as much as a bloop single that was just a pop fly that no one happened to be standing near. Or, you know, you could have an eight pitch at bat that wasn't even a good at bat, right? You could have, you know, an at bat where a pitcher throws three balls so far outside of the strike zone that, you know, no one would have swung at them. And then he throws two more and you chase and you foul them off.

And then he throws two more right down the middle mistake pitches and you chase and you foul them off and then he throws two more right down the middle mistake pitches and you barely touch them and then you end up grounding out or something. I don't know whether that's a good at-bat just because you happen to see a lot of pitches. Yeah, and again, it's not like you wouldn't use this as your only metric for deciding who to sign. That's not what it's for, really.

It's more, I I think more narrative. Right. And, you know, it just helps distill a message to two guys who, you know, you maybe only have 15 minutes to talk to and they're paying attention for two of them. So would you how many of these would you keep or do you do you think any of them is counterproductive to encourage um sack flies but it it depends on the situation i mean you certainly like every team even teams that don't bunt hardly at all uh they want their minor leaders to develop the ability to sacrifice bunt so when you're in the minors although it was this in the this was in the rangers dugout yep okay so well i don't If you're in the majors, presumably you're sacrifice bunting almost all the time. You're sacrifice bunting because your manager asked you to do it. And once your manager asks you to do it, well, it's better to lay one down than to fail to lay one down.

So I don't know that I would want guys feeling sad that they did a good job obeying a manager's orders. Sack fly depends on the situation. that they did a good job obeying a manager's orders. Sack fly depends on the situation. There are situations where you definitely feel like disappointment at a sack fly. And I wouldn't want players to be like super committed to getting a sacrifice fly in every sacrifice fly situation. I mean, certainly the getting the runner over has always felt like a huge letdown to me. There's never once when I have seen a batter get the runner over by grounding out the second

have I thought, yes! It's always a letdown. It's like the equivalent of watching your team punt on fourth and inches. It just feels like such a letdown. So that one, I guess, would be the one. That one's on there, right? Yeah. Okay.

All right, so let's do our play index segment for this week. And this one was inspired by a question from a listener, Greg in DC. Greg says, So one thing I have always been curious about is how reliever usage has changed over the years, specifically the loogie idea, left-handed one-out guy. So my question is as follows, for each 10-year period since 1950, so 1950 to 59, etc., with the final years being 2010 to 13, which reliever is the leader in percentage of batters faced that are the same side of the plate as they are? For example,

lefties facing other lefties. I'm specifically curious to see how dramatically this has increased and who the current leader is from 2010 to 2013. So at first, we weren't sure that this could be done via the play Index, but it can. We should not have doubted it. So if you want to follow along at home for some Play Index practice, you go to baseballreference.com slash playindex. You go to the Split Finders section and click on Player Pitching. And there you would click the little box, the little circle that says find total spanning seasons, because we want to look at decades here, and then you put in the years

that you want. So you put in 1950 to 59 for the start and end dates. Then you go to the split type drop down, choose platoon splits, and we're going to do lefty on lefty in this case. So you would want to do versus left-handed batters as left-handed pitcher. Then you check the little box there that says compare this split to the player's totals. And then you can sort by batters faced and choose some sort of minimum so that you don't end up with guys who face three batters. So I just put in 100 innings pitch just for each decade that I did.

And then you get a list and you get two columns in that list that tells you the total number of batters faced over that span in that split. So how many lefties that a lefty faced over that split, and also the total number of batters he faced. uh, he faced. So then you can export that into Excel. One of the nice things about the, the play index is that you can export any report and play around with it any, a little bit more. Um, so I just clicked on CSV and copied, pasted everything into Excel, created a column, uh, to divide the number of lefties face versus the total batters faced. And that gave me the percentage for each decade. And then we sorted by the highest number.

So for each decade in the 1950s, the leader in the percentage of lefties faced, or lefties faced as a percentage of overall batters, was Bill Henry, who faced 31.7 or 31.8% lefties. I'm legit excited, by the way, to hear the results of this. Like, I'm actually on the edge of my seat. I might fall off. So Bill Henry, he was a—in 1959, he led the league, his only black ink ever. He led the league with 65 games pitched.

And yet he also pitched 134 innings. So he was a kind of a long man, or at least I guess everyone at that point was kind of a long man. He was also an all star in 1960. But the most interesting thing about Bill Henry that I found out in about 30 seconds of research, also on Baseball Reference, is this story. In August 2007, a widely circulated obituary originating in Lakeland, Florida, announced the death of former Major League pitcher Bill Henry at age 83. However, research by Sabres' Dave Lambert

located Henry alive and well and residing in Deer Park, Texas. Sabres' further inquiry had been prompted by discrepancies concerning Henry's date and place of birth in the obituary. Soon after, it emerged that the dead man had been claiming to be the former pitcher. Hence the error. The Florida man's window. Of course, it's a Florida man. Of course.

The Florida man's widow, who had been married to him for 19 years said, I just took his word that that's who he was. It's an awful shock. It's hard. I was married to somebody that... Stop laughing. When you get to the grieving conned widow, you stop laughing. But that's the punchline, the grieving widow in this case. It's hard. I was married to somebody that maybe I didn't know. So there was someone masquerading as Bill Henry, the man who faced the highest percentage of lefties in the 1950s. The good news is that the real Bill Henry is still alive and well at age 86. In the 1960s, so again, so that's 31.8% in the 50s. In the 1960s, so again, so that's 31.8% in the 50s. When we go to the 60s, the percentage rises to 37.8%.

And that was Bill Pleiss, who pitched for the Twins from 61 to 66 and was really not very good at it. But he faced a lot of lefties. In the 1970s, it rises again very slightly, this time to 38.7. And that was Tippy Martinez. That's much lower than I expected for the 70s, by the way. I would have expected a much higher jump. Then I guess you will also be surprised that there was no jump in the 80s. It went from the leader in the 70s, 38.7, leader in the 80s, 38.0.

So there was no progression there. Yeah, that's interesting because by the 80s, the honey cut was... Right. I mean, you start to think of that as the modern bullpen era toward the end of that decade. So Juan Agosto, who pitched for 13 years, he was 38.0%, so there was no gain there. Now in the 90s, do you want to guess

either the percentage or the pitcher or both? For the 90s, I'll guess the pitcher is both uh for the 90s i'll guess the pitcher is jim pool and the uh total is uh 56.7 uh so jim pool was a very good guess he ranked fifth on the list um would you well i i mean you've already guessed so i guess that's your guess And it was a good guess It was a very good guess I feel like you're downplaying a little bit The fact that I did guess Jim Poole Yes, it is Although probably once I tell you who the leader was

You will think it was obvious in retrospect It's Mike Myers Oh yeah, good one But the percentage was considerably lower I think it was obvious in retrospect. It's Mike Myers. Oh, yeah. Good one. But the percentage was considerably lower. It was only 46.3% in the 90s. In the 2000s, also Mike Myers again, but the percentage rose. It was 57%, so pretty much what you guessed for the 90s. And then the 2010s.

pretty much what you guessed for the 90s and then the 2010s so for the current decade obviously we're only dealing with a few seasons so i limited it to 50 innings pitched and now i i solicit guests choate is second on the list huh interesting uh i don't have a better guess than chote first guy has pitched only about half as many games as chote uh so harder to come up with it's clay rapata interesting and do you know the percentage of clay rapata and 100 and chote almost the same uh 71.7 so pretty big gap So it's interesting There's some gap between the 50s and 60s Some very tiny gap between the 60s and 70s No gap between the 70s and 80s And then big gap in the 90s

Even bigger gap in the 2000s And then gigantic gap so far in this decade Where'd Ray King rank? I don't think Ray King for the 2000s and then gigantic gap so far in this decade where'd ray king rank i don't think ray king in the for the 2000s i ray king was the first name that came to mind but i don't think he would have challenged mike myers i i would doubt that ray king would would yeah by percentage of mike myers uh yeah he wasn't he ranked 10th okay um the the top five uh was, Brian Schaus, Trevor Miller. Uh-huh. Oh, Javier Lopez.

Sure. Oh, actually, Lopez is fifth. Fourth is Bobby C. Oh, interesting. Okay. So we're up to 71.7 so far this decade. What do you think the leader will be by the end of this decade? Or what do you think the leader will be in the 2020s?

Did you by chance, do you have the leader for just last year? No, I don't. It's hard to do much. No, I don't. It's hard to do much. I mean, gosh, it's hard to imagine anybody topping like 85%. And, I mean, they're so committed with Chote as it is that you have to figure, like, there's not going to be, it's not like there's going to be any sort of extra prioritization

of this concept like the shift happened as they, you know, partly as bullpens grew but also as managers prioritize this more and right now I feel like they've prioritized this to the max. You can't prioritize it any more than is currently being prioritized with

Randy Choate Yeah, you'd think so. Although, I don't know, maybe people would have said that about Mike Myers at the time. I mean, you could imagine maybe a guy who, like, if the bullpens added one person maybe, you could maybe imagine a guy who, like, never comes in for more than one batter, like under, you know, unless they're sequential. But I bet Schott's 71%. I bet the 29% of righties he sees,

I bet of those, let's say it was, I don't know how many it is, but let's say that's 50 right-handers, I would bet 30 or so of those came in relatively low leverage, or maybe the opposite, maybe extra innings where they were kind of forced to go to him for a little longer time. Last year the high was actually only 70%.

It was Choate just setting a minimum of 25 innings. So Choate in the 90s, or in the 2010s, is higher than any pitcher last year was in one year. So maybe we've already seen it. Maybe we're seeing the downslope now. Possible, possible. Okay, well, good question from Greg. Interesting stuff. You can subscribe to the Play Index and do these things yourself.

Just go to baseballreference.com, click on the play index, use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Okay, let's take Miles's question. Let's imagine that the following two things have happened. First, Mike Trout signs a deal that pays him $20 million a year for the next five years. Two, MLB has access to a machine that literally flash clones Mike Trout. So any team can have as many Trouts as they want, as long as they pay them that same contract, $5,100, $20 every year. Say you're the GM of a new expansion team that can tap into this Trout reservoir. Also in this exercise, imagine that you can buy any other pieces for your ball club

in free agency. How many trouts do you buy at each payroll level? So he says 50 million, 65 million, 75 million, 100 million, 200 million, and 5,000 million. Which would be, so 5 billion would be, so $5 billion would be enough to have 250 Mike Trouts. Yeah. Okay, so you would have Mike Trout literally at every one of your affiliates, every DL spot, and you'd have like 40 that you would have to cut at the end of spring training. Right. the end of spring training right so i guess the question is um how much value do you think trout gives up playing a dramatically different position right so i so you have obviously if you can afford it you want to trout in all three outfield spots if you had 25 wait if you're the 25 million team

well okay we can knock that one out early so then you'd have $5 million for your other 24 spots. You couldn't actually do it. So you would only be able to field like 10 other guys. You could choose no trouts. Right, but if you wanted one trout, you could only have 10 other players on your team. Yeah, right. Making the major league minimum.

But would you do it? I don't think I would do it. I don't either. I don't think I would. You figure if you had a $25 million payroll and you just went all young guys like the Astros, you could get better deals than Trout at $20 million just by taking advantage of the pre-arbitration portions of players' careers. Right. Now, if you have a $65 million payroll, you definitely take one trout. Do you take two trouts?

And leave yourself $25 million for the final 23 spots. Yes. Yeah, I mean, you're already 20. know if things break right well so here's the thing if things break right you're already 20 20 wins over replacement i mean you're already a 70 right you know like a 70 to 75 win team and you've got 23 25 million dollars to play with assuming you know i mean maybe there's some practical limits to how many replacement level players you can actually find. But so here's the problem, though, is that 70, you're no longer, I mean, if we're, there's teams out there with like nine trouts or like six trouts at least. True.

You'll never, you just, it would take so many more wins. Replacement level would... What I'm saying is that a 70-win team in our current environment would not win 70 games in a league with infinite Mike Trouts. It would probably win like 40 games because there would just be so many Mike Trouts. The standard of play would be massive. Right. Huh. Yeah, I haven't heard that.

Because for $20 million, Trout at any position is a good deal. At any position. At third base, shortstop, second base, first base, all the outfits. So seven. So maybe not catcher, but it's clone Trout. You're not really worried about breaking him. So you probably would teach him to catch too.

Yeah, probably. On the other hand, so here's the other thing though there'd be so many trouts that like like uh like uh you know who's a pretty good player like uh uh jason kipnis would not have a job because trouts would be at every team's you know every second base so kipnis would be the new replacement level. That's true. I mean, anybody could just go swipe. That would give you a lot of incentive not to sign Trouts. Yeah, so you'd have to come to some kind of equilibrium point where...

Right, so you first, you'd have to figure out, yeah, you'd have to figure out how many teams are going to sign trouts. So then you have to figure out how many excess players are available. So anyway, I think $65 million is probably not two trouts. I think if it's $ 65 million in this landscape, you take your one trout and then you use your 45 million. You have to aim higher. Two trouts takes up too much of your payroll.

You know that you're not going to be a 95-win team. Is this question better if we just assume that only our team can have multiple trouts? It is not close to better it is significantly worse it's just so much more complicated though when you have to account for the new replacement level in in clone trout league um yeah yeah ben all right so so if you're having to you're having to think through multiple levels it's it's okay all right well if you all right so if you have 75 million then you take two traps i don't know that you do what i didn't i wouldn't even think about it at 65 so why would i at 75 so now i have 35 million dollars left for 23 players again i mean

i'm assuming that this the level of play is going to be very high and i don't think it's going to be quite balanced out by the jason kipnis is floating around so i i think that i've got to take my 20 million and use it to develop uh i don't even know what i would use to develop what are you going to develop prospects who are as good as trout well no what you need is you need to figure out a way to get uh good players who are pre-arb at that point. You just can't. Because you figure, like, start with the Dodgers. You know the Dodgers are going to have seven, right?

So how good is that team? They've got seven trouts. So they have $140 million committed. So that means they have $100 million more just to spend on pitching and the catcher. So that means they have $100 million more just to spend on pitching and a catcher. And so now they've not only got seven Trouts, but they've got something like all All-Stars across the rest of their team. And if Trout's basically like, let's say Trout's a nine-win player in center, an eight-win player on the corners, and a six-win player at all the infield positions.

So now you're... The team is almost unbeatable, right? It's 50 wins. It's already, even not counting the pitching and the catchers, you're already a 100-win team. Even if it's all replacement level at the other positions, you're a 100-win team. And there's just no way to top it

because you can't get a player better than Trout at those positions. I mean, maybe you can get one at the two positions where they don't have a Trout, but probably not enough to make up the gap between Trout and everyone else at all the other positions. So you'd need massive injuries or terrible luck for that team not to win. Right. So would Cano's price go up or down in this scenario down right because you could you could get you could get trout for less you you can get trout for less and even though trout we we've trout is worse than cano in in our telling because we've decided that trout is a six win player at second base which probably we shouldn't he's probably better than that yeah there's no reason

to think that he wouldn't be better than that. But then you might see the Dodgers going, well, we have nowhere else to separate ourselves from the Yankees. So maybe the Yankees and the Dodgers then, maybe this is the proxy war that these two superpowers fight. And it's just over that extra half win they can get it at second base. And maybe they end up spending $45 million on Cano just to get an extra half win at second base because they can separate themselves from the other one. Probably not, though. But maybe.

Maybe that's their career. Yeah. So, all right. Well, I guess we don't even have to, I mean, at the $5 billion level, you would obviously get as many trouts as you can fit. Yeah, do you think? I mean, yeah, you would. Well, no, you wouldn't. You would get, well, you'd get seven, and then you'd get like six or seven in reserve.

Right. I mean mean you're not going to get 25 trouts no no do all and the trouts don't all age at once i mean we're assuming that this machine can can can flash clone these at will so you wouldn't even need a reserve i wonder if you'd need to hmm yeah right so. Right. So if you get a, if you get a fresh trout, um, presumably it's as old as trout is currently, you know, they take, they take, uh, they, or, well, yeah, I guess the question is, do they keep producing trouts who are the same age? Are the clones always 21 years old or do they clone trout however old he is because then you'd have different trout aging curves or you'd have different you'd have clones at different points along the curve

and if the clones are always the same age then you'd have to consider buying new trouts every year to replace the old trout you know it just occurred to me how smart it was that you didn't preface this with okay this will be our last question. Because I'm pretty sure everybody would have turned off by now. Every single person would have turned off by now. Yes, it probably has. Okay, well. What do you? Yeah, no. No. Crazy, crazy question. While we were talking, Dan Brooks sent me a question that he demanded that we answer. How long until we get a contract that is most easily measured in billions? Would a half billion count? Yes, I guess so.

Not really. Yeah, I mean— Because if it was 501 million, you wouldn't say $0.51 billion. Right. So it would have to basically be a billion, right? Wouldn't it have to be a billion? Yes, probably. That would save you a lot of time to be able to say a billion.

So if the total possible commitment of Cabrera's contract is something like 352, if those options vest. So we are nowhere near there. And really, the top edge of contracts hasn't increased all that rapidly. I mean, the average earnings have. But if you look at the top earners a decade ago and the top earners now, it's not a huge difference. And I can't imagine that teams are going to start giving, I don't know, I guess maybe if everyone signs extensions and there are only a few free agents available every winter, then you'd give the best guy a very long contract. But still, you'd need a whole lot of inflation to get anywhere close to that.

Right. Because you could imagine Trout when he's a free agent at 26. I don't think Trout will get this, but you could imagine when he's a free agent at 26 being worth, say, $50 million a year over 12 years. So then theoretically that's more than halfway there and then you might say well i you know 18 years or something but um i don't think he'll get that so i would guess like 40 years yeah i'll take the under on that i mean right now the most valuable franchise is worth two and a half billion i think is the most recent figure i saw for the Yankees. So talking about a player alone who's making a large percentage of that. But a lot of players have received contracts that are bigger than their franchise was sold for.

I think that Artie Moreno bought the Angels for something like $150 million, and that's not anything special. Well, I mean, I don't know. What was the biggest contract commitment 20 years ago? I mean, if you project it out along the same line. Yeah, 20, but the problem, like you said, 10 was not that much. 10 years ago it was 250 million, and now

it's 320 million. The spike happened in the 90s, right? In the 90s and early 2000s, it slowed down since then. But then so is the economy yeah i'll say 30 years

all right seems fine artie moreno bought the already bought the angels for 180 million and at about the same time a rod signed for 252 all right so we'll be back on monday with original topics hopefully we'll talk about baseball or something. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, which as I look at it right now has 995 members. So you can get us into four digits. You can follow us or subscribe to us and rate and review us on iTunes.

That would be appreciated. And you can send us questions for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. Hope you enjoyed the preview shows. Have a wonderful weekend. We will be back on Monday.