Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 424: Bonds vs. Trout and Other Listener Emails

Episode Date: April 9, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Barry Bonds vs. Mike Trout, Billy Hamilton, teams taking the long view, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 424 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. Hello. Hello. Anything to say? Any Ryan Webb, Matt Albers updates? Um, no.

There was something, but I forget what it was, so I probably don't need to go over it. Should we plug the Sabre seminar? Yeah, sure. Sam's talking about the the sabermetric scouting and science of baseball seminar which is uh colloquially referred to as the saber seminar this is the uh the series of presentations and panels and and discussions organized by our friend dan brooks it is going to be the fourth annual one of these.

It's held in mid-August, August 16th to 17th in Boston, and it is held to benefit the Jimmy Fund, which is a Boston area cancer research. All of the proceeds go directly to the Jimmy Fund. Dan gets great guests, people from teams like Ben Cherigdon and Jeff Lunau this year, people from BP, people from other Sabermetric sites. I went last year and it was really fun and I learned a lot. And tickets are on sale now. So you can go to saberseminar.com slash tickets and get them. sabreseminar.com slash tickets and get them. It's a two-day thing, and you will feel good about yourself and also learn things.

So we recommend that you attend. All right, so it's listener email show. I've picked out some emails. Let's start. I guess we should start with the customary mic drop question. Just get it out of the way. And this one is a question after your own heart because it's a Mike Trout question and a Barry Bonds question. Two of your favorite topics to discuss. This comes from Jake Mintz from Cespedes Family Barbecue.

And Jake says, if you had the choice, would you rather take current Trout or 2001 Bonds? You'd get Bonds' 2001 season and the certainty that comes with knowing the remainder of his career, or you get current Trout. You don't know if he'll stay with you past his current contract or what kind of player he might be in five years, but he could be more valuable in the long run. Side question, if you take Trout, at what point would you take Bonds? 1999, 98, 97. Another side question, if you take Bonds, at what point would you take Trout? 2002, 2003, Bonds. So just for reference, Barry Bonds from 2001 on was worth 54.4 wins above replacement which is pretty crazy and one of

those one of those years he missed almost entirely yes right he had 0.6 warped in 2005 and the next two he he was in his 40s yes so he was basically a border a borderline hall of fame career after age 36 despite missing a season probably more probably more warp than than jim rice probably uh let me see it's probably very close um jim rice had 46.4, so yes. I believe any two of those four years would be more than Bruce Suter. So do you take Trout over a guaranteed 54.4 warp? And this is not knowing what happens to Trout beyond his current contract, I suppose. Yeah, but so it's basically seven years of Trout and then possibly re-signing him. You know, you have seven years to convince him to sign for less than he's worth beyond the seventh year.

But seven years of Trout or the final year, seven years of Barry Bonds. But seven years of Trout or the final seven years of Barry Bonds. And it's, well, I mean, for starters, Bonds, of course, would, I mean, Bonds would get, presumably Bonds would get suspended right now almost immediately if he were. Yes. If he were 2001, 2002, 2003 Bonds, he would almost certainly be suspended. I mean, probably. Yes. It would be suspended. And so in that case, he would almost certainly be suspended. I mean, probably it would be suspended.

And so in that case, he would be not very much good for you. Now, the question is whether after his 50 games, first off, one question would be whether Bud Selig would allow him to go free after 50 games, or if Bonds is like A-Rod, the sort of player that Bud Selig... He would stop at nothing. Yes, he will after he hunts him down he will

feast slowly on his thick hindquarters and keep any scavengers from getting any of him. So it's conceivable that Bonds would be punished far beyond 50 games if he were suspended for only 50 games, which would take suspended for only 50 games,

which would take about three or four warp off of that total, do we believe that he would be at the same high level? I think we've had this conversation before. In fact, I know we have. I think we had it when I was still in the Honda Fit. Yeah, and I thought that he would not. Yeah, and I thought that he would not. Yeah, right. We both are aware of the evidence

that currently exists about the likely ineffectiveness of performance-enhancing drugs, and yet we also both can't believe that it wouldn't apply to Barry Bonds, or it would apply to Barry Bonds. Wouldn't apply. Would apply.

So the question would then be how good would he be when he came back? It's probably fair to say that it's probably fair to say he probably fair to say he wasn't on performance enhancing drugs in 2006 and 2007 because that was in the middle of testing. If he was, then that would indicate that he could get away with it forever.

So let's just assume he wasn't on PEDs in 2006 and 2007. And in that case, his performance is still fits in with his age-related decline seamlessly. And maybe suggests that a huge portion of his elite four-year run was true talent and not PED-driven. It's not a perfectly smooth decline, but, I mean, you know, he had a 480 on base percentage at 42. I guess that I would say that if Bonds were playing now in those seven years, I would probably count on 43 to 47 warp out of him. He'd be making more than Trout is making. I assume we're going to adjust for inflation,

because his salary back then was $18 million, which was pretty close to the highest he'd play in the game. He wasn't, because A-Rod was there the whole time, but he was paid $18 million a year for those years. Adjusted for inflation is probably like $25-ish or more. So compared to Trout, he'll be paid more. And I think that Trout can top six to eight wins a year. It's close, but I would narrowly bet the over if you told me 49 wins

over Trout's next seven years. Well, you really dug into all of the implications of this question that I was not even really considering. If, I mean, I think it, I think it might be a stretch to assume that he was not on anything in his final couple seasons.

I mean, we, we have seen players beat testing one way or another, so I would not be shocked to find that, that he was doing so also. But what if, I mean, can we take the question on its face without considering those factors and say that if we had a player... All right, so if you're saying that it's narrowly trout

even considering all of these caveats, then I assume that if we're just talking about a player who is guaranteed to give you 54.4 wins above replacement, and it's not Bonds, and it's not a guy who is potentially going to test positive, it's just a guy who's definitely giving you those wins, you would take him over Trout? you would take him over Trout? No, I wouldn't because Trout's going to be underpaid for those seven years.

What if money is no object? Well, now we're talking about something unrealistic and not tied to the present game at all. Sorry to dumb this down. not tied to the present game at all sorry to dumb this down uh if you're asking me whether i are you asking me basically are you asking me a twist on the old certainty versus risk question yeah pretty much i um i i i believe if i'm being consistent here, I believe I always come down on the side of risk. That I would rather have the volatility. I believe that's how I always come down. I think that's how I answered on the AJ Burnett question, for instance.

And I believe that's how I answer when people ask us whether I would rather have a streaky hitter or a non-streaky hitter. So, okay, so you're taking trout pretty much regardless. Wait, if you're giving me, if 49 is the magic number, it's not. Bonds made, you know, had 54. But let's just say, since you're not giving me even one steroid suspension, which seems unfair, and you're not giving me even one steroid suspension, which seems unfair, and you're not giving me any salary adjustment, can we just lower it to 49? And then you can ask me whether I take the over or the under on 49. Well, you've already said that you would, right? Yes. Yes. Right.

Yeah. Okay. But if we go back to 2,000 bonds. I'm no longer answering you. I'm now trying to convince you to ask the question that I've already answered. If we add 2,000 bonds into the equation, does this tax away you? Well, because I don't get an eighth year of trout necessarily. I'll be lucky to get, i mean probably i'll get a draft pick probably right i mean yeah you think draft picks are gonna be around in seven years it's possible that they might not be you've got a pretty decent chance of resigning him though i

mean i would think assuming the angels are still owned by someone with a lot of money and assuming he hasn't had some kind of conflict with whoever the manager is then. Yeah, but now I'm signing him to a deal that we're going to very ambivalently nod our heads and go, well, it's really risky. Unless they could do a second extension, like a second Longoria deal. They could do a second extension, like a second Longoria deal. They could, right.

That's part of what you get for having Trout during this period. But you also, I mean, if you're going to attach year 8 to what I get, I'm worried that you're also attaching year 18 to it and that I'm not going to be all that thrilled with it. So I'll take, you give me Bonds. The thing that gets tricky is that Bonds in 99 wasn't very good. He was okay, but you can't extend it much. You'd have to almost go all the way to 98.

Put Bonds in 97, 98 and 96 was really good. Yeah, and then it's too much. Now we're way beyond so i would say that i would take um i probably would take it with with with the extra year of bonds i would say that i'll take trout over bonds final seven years uh and the discount that i would have to get would be basically one extra year of bonds to make it to make it worth my while which is kind of incredible when you think about it like what we're really talking about but I mean if you it's almost like the the four years that bonds had though almost like those can't be topped there's almost nothing you could give me that would beat those four years um but the you know the last three were he was he was all he was often injured he

was a defensive liability and and he was amazing but you know you put him in a like for instance as good a hitters he was uh... you put him in a lineup where uh... radar isn't protecting him anymore and where i'm you know uh... uh... anymore and where um you know uh uh i'm trying to remember who was there in 2006 and 2007

edgardo alfonso isn't protecting him um and you know he loses a great deal of those intentional walks and you know it's a good slugging percentage it's a very good slugging percentage but you know knock 70 points of on basebase percentage off of those lines, and he's not quite the same deal, right? Right. This seems like a good opportunity for you to share the best Barry Bonds fun fact ever on the podcast. Yeah, sure. I think Mark Sweeney was doing a little protection of Bonds at that point. Some Pedro Feliz.

I know Pedro Feliz started a year as the cleanup hitter or maybe the number five hitter behind bonds pedro feliz uh yeah well in 2007 bonds bonds was cleaning up mostly and durham was hitting fifth ryan klesko was hitting fifth uh benji melina was hitting fifth um yeah so yeah benji melina is a good one i forgot about benji melina uh so this is my my new favorite bonds uh recently unearthed my previous favorite bonds fun you know my previous favorite bonds fun fact uh i will when you say it i don't think i do now that uh he's he has a 5 000 ops against you know x number of pitchers including guillermo moda who we faced nine times last time i shared that i got a bunch of angry

angry people emailing me saying like that that he was walked eight times and they thought he had hit nine home runs and to that i say you are missing the point it is actually more impressive that there are eight walks in there. The fact that Guillermo Mota could face him nine times and eight times just give up, like that in no circumstance was Guillermo Mota willing to pitch to him, except once, and in that situation he gave up a home run. It's actually, if it were five for five with five home runs, less impressive. Now, if it were nine for nine with 5 home runs, less impressive. Now, if it were 9 for 9 with 9 home runs, I'll give you that.

But if it were 5 for 5 with 5 home runs, it would be less impressive than 9 plate appearances without ever doing anything but a homer. All right, so this is the new one. It is loading. All right, here we go, here we go. So from 2001 to 2004, Barry Bonds had

138 plate appearances against pitchers in the same season that those pitchers got Cy Young votes. Okay? Yes. In those 138 plate appearances, Bonds hit 327-522-786. So, against

Cy Young vote-getters at the final of their game. Cy Young winners? Including Cy Young winners, but Cy Young vote-getters. Wait, just anyone who got a vote at all? Anyone who got a vote, yeah. Okay, okay. So winners or not. And I will say of the 138 plate appearances,

roughly 98 of them were against randy johnson so like we're we're talking about good pitchers and the rest were eric gagne um we're talking about very good pitchers and so he had a 1308 ops uh in those plate appearances uh crazy yeah he had one year where he faced royalswalt seven times, and he had a 37.50 OPS. Wish I had been writing then. It would have been nice. Yeah, I was writing, but I was writing about small-town government. That was a major mistake.

You should have done it in a different sequence. You should be writing about small-town government now, and bonds was around yeah all right uh this question comes from matt trueblood he says billy hamilton has had a really brutal start to the season i don't think he's in immediate danger of being benched optioned or even pushed down the lineup though at least for any significant period so how many plate appearances with a 300 on base percentage do you guys think it would take for Hamilton to lose his spot in the everyday lineup? How many with a 280 on base percentage? How many with a 260?

I had this conversation with somebody in real life on opening day. Actually, as a matter of fact, 300 he could go forever. He'd go for, what, 17 years, I guess? Yeah, I mean, I guess you could still say that maybe the leadoff spot is not the best place to put him if he has a 300. But if he has a 300, he's definitely worth starting every day just based on the defensive value and the steals. Yeah, I mean, he'd be a three or four win player probably.

Yeah, I mean, that was... With a 300 on base percentage. That was basically his Pocota projection. Yeah, this has been a topic that you've been interested in, and I'm surprised you haven't written about it since his Pocota came out, because... I wrote about it briefly in a Pocota article at BP, and then I wrote a Grantland wrote about it briefly in a pakoda article at bp and then i wrote a grantland

thing about it so he he had um his pakoda projection was for like a 296 or 97 non-base percentage um but he was still projected to be worth i think close to three wins just from the defense and the running so and and the reds it seems like don't really have a traditional leadoff man like they're not gonna put joey vato there and they don't really have any big on base threats other than vato it's kind of like vato you're you your presumptive nationally gun-based percentage leader, and a bunch of below-average OBP guys in their lineup. So that's part of it, is that they might just kind of leave him there because he's speedy and he would be worth playing. So even if he doesn't have your typical leadoff man OBP,

they might just leave him in that spot. leadoff man OBP, they might just leave him in that spot. If he has a 280, I don't know. I guess in practical terms, it probably matters what his batting average is as to whether they would let him stay there or not. I mean, if he's hitting 250 or 260 with a 280 on base percentage it looks respectable if he's hitting 210 not so much um yeah and i mean it might matter what his slugging percentage is as well yeah and we can just assume that it will be bad probably and we i i would say we also don't really know yet what his base running is going to be like

we had this like incredible glimpse of it last summer um but we don't really know yet whether it's going to be um you know like like let's say he because because I'm going to look at Vince Coleman right now, but let's say he had a 305 on base percentage. Does he in that situation steal 120 in 125 attempts, or does he steal 65 in 75 attempts? I mean, that's a big difference. It's a sizable difference in value, but it's a big difference in perception. So Vince Coleman in 1986 had a 301 on base percentage and stole 107 bases and 121 drives. And that was in an era where it was a lot more acceptable to get caught and where guys did get caught. Guys don't get caught nearly as much as they used to. So, yeah, I don't think we really know the answer to what he's going to steal yet.

I mean, Pocota, I think, projected him to steal like 76 or something like that. And that's a fine guess at what he might do as a median. But I don't think anybody is ruling out 130, and I wouldn't really rule out that he gets caught. I've seen him steal bases. I saw him in the Cal League, and he wasn't very good at it. And minor leaguers did throw him out. So we don't know whether last summer was the real Billy Hamilton

or whether his minor league caught stealing rates are the real Billy Hamilton, or whether his kind of minor league caught stealing rights are the real Billy Hamilton. Because I think he was still in like 83% success or something in the minors, which if you dock that a little bit for the majors, it's not an automatic green light necessarily in that case. And, well, Vince Coleman in that 1986 season hit leadoff 145 times for the Cardinals. Um, and he was, I mean, he was a, probably a below average left fielder. Um, so you would think that based on Hamilton's position and defensive value, it'd be a lot easier to leave him in the lineup. Of course, that was also the mid eighties and people weren't paying as much attention to on-base percentage. But potentially he's a much more valuable player because Coleman just had the flashy stolen base totals

but wasn't really all that valuable. He was just kind of an average guy in his best seasons. So Hamilton, by the way, last year in AAA, he only stole 75 bases and at only an 83% success rate with a 308 on base percentage in a full season. And since he got promoted to AA, he's only stolen at an 80% success rate, which just isn't that extraordinary. And so I'm not saying that he's not better than that, and I'm not saying that he's not worse than that. I'm saying that it's actually one of the hardest things

to predict about Billy Hamilton is not his offense, which I feel confident saying is not going to be good, but will be kind of good enough that he can be a two- or three-win player based on his defense and base running, even at this stage in his career. It's really his base running, because there's like 60 or 70 stolen bases worth of volatility in what I can imagine him doing. Yeah. Okay. All right.

This question also comes from Matt. He first talks about how Didi Gregorius is in the minors. He lost the position battle for the shortstop job to Chris Owings, and Kevin Towers shot down any notion of platooning Gregorius and Owings. Matt says, while the consensus seems to be that this is for the best, Gregorius is a clearly superior defender and hits right-handed pitchers well. Playing every day is probably the optimal thing for any young player's development, but it seems to me that a substantial part-time role only dooms players who are destined to be doomed by something anyway. In the meantime, the Diamondbacks are giving away wins by not carrying an MLB-caliber player who can help paper over the weaknesses of their rookie shortstop.

The Tigers are handcuffing themselves too, playing a terrible shortstop platoon instead of signing Steven Drew. Are teams getting too invested in the long term, always the long term, the smart investments, the value of draft picks, the Cardinals model, instead of just going for it sometimes? The success cycle theory has been essentially dismissed, but is that because it was never correct or because it's being phased out by a lot of the very methodical executives who think more like economists than competitors, at least on occasion? I love the Cardinals model and the Astros-Cubs model and even the Tigers-Dodgers-Yankees model. I get where everyone is coming from and

nothing beats sustainable success. If everyone comes to think more or less the same way, though, it seems to me that no success would be sustainable anymore because parity will overrun the game. If everyone is better, is anyone better off? Can't wait to hear your answer, Ben. Well, I think, I don't know, I think there are probably times where draft picks have been overvalued or whether where a team has put the future ahead of the present too much. I mean, the the Tigers shortstop situation, if that was if that's a matter of a draft pick or, you know, I mean, to me, that only makes sense if they just don't have the money to spend on Steve and Drew, right? Like they just literally don't have it. Otherwise, why would the Tigers not want to sign Steve and Drew when the alternative is, you know, Alex Gonzalez? It seems to me that that was a no-brainer.

And of course, you know, when Iglesias was heard, everyone immediately said, oh, well, now Drew is going to go to the Tigers. And it hasn't happened. And I can't really think of a good reason why it wouldn't have happened unless really the Tigers are totally tapped out. I mean, I don't know about... I have written about, you know, if everyone is smart and everyone hires a smart GM, then is there even any advantage to hiring one anymore?

Or, you know, if every GM is at least competent and is not making the stupid mistakes that maybe they used to make in the past, then it's pretty tough to upgrade or to really get an edge by just hiring a smart guy, someone who might have given you an edge a decade ago or two decades ago. So that's the case, I think. I don't know. As for the Diamondbacks, you figure maybe they're hoping to shop one of these short stops or trade one of them and and potentially a guy like gregorius is worth more if he's playing every day and excelling in triple a than if he's playing in a part-time role in the majors and and possibly not adapting so well to it so um maybe they consider that worth something to them worth more to them than whatever advantage he would give them if he were actually playing at the major league level

i don't know you have any thoughts um i don't necessarily i wonder if uh the fact that uh gms don't get fired anymore as we've talked about i mean obviously they will a whole bunch of them are going to get fired probably all at once and this trend will uh be over but you know as we've talked about no gms have been fired in a long time i wonder if i wonder if there's this like sense of security that they have all collectively grown to feel which is why they're playing the long game so much. Because it really does feel like you see very little, you see very few decisions that punt the future or mortgage the future anymore. I mean really, what do these GMs care about some draft pick?

Unless they really think that they're going to either be there in six years, or that they're somehow going to get credit in six years, or that they're all really good people with total integrity, and they just want to do the best job, or that they don't have as much power, and that, in fact, the sort of strength of the organization keeps GMs in check by having lots of kind of veto points between them and a bad move. Well, I wonder whether the increased attention paid to prospects these days

has made it just as important for a GM's job safety to have a strong farm system as to have a successful major league club. Yeah, that could be. It might actually be that that's sort of the currency. Unless you're winning the World Series or getting to the World Series, maybe the second best thing is to have a dope farm system. Yeah, especially because then you can point to that and say that you deserve to have a longer leash. Right. In four or five years, all this talent is going to come together. And I put it all there and you should let me see how it pans out. Maybe that's, it's kind of the Dayton Moore plan, I guess, right? Say you have a seven year plan or a 10 year plan and just kind of keep extending the window on your plan while

you have a great farm system that is potentially a couple of years away from doing something really good. Um, so maybe maybe maybe that has something to do with it i wonder how long i wonder i wonder how long you could plausibly say your plan is like you probably couldn't get away with a 35 year plan probably not he's gotten away with 10 years without really winning anything and he keeps getting extensions so has he ever said it's a 10-year plan? I think so. Oh, wow. I'm pretty sure. All right.

Let's do our play index segment. All right. So I started thinking about roster flexibility and how teams like the R teams like the rays and the a's to to really name two have a lot of guys who can slot into different roles and they use them in a lot of those different roles and we've talked about how uh it seems as though more to i don't we've talked about how it seems like this i don't know if we found that it's true but use their dh spot as uh you know as a place to rotate guys um that's been a strategy forever by some teams, but it feels more common now.

So I started wondering whether we see fewer players who only play one position now than we did in the past. And so I limited this to the year since 1998, which is the last time that baseball had expansion, partly because this grew out of a different question that I was looking at that I'll also probably bring up that requires it to be post-expansion. And so I looked for, in the play index under the batting season finder, one of the things you can do is find seasons with players who meet a certain criteria.

So you could, if you wanted, you could look up all the players who've hit 50 home runs in history, or you could look up how many players hit 50 home runs in each season and see which seasons had the most players that did that. So I use that, and I set my parameters as the years 1998 to 2013 and minimum of 20 games played in a season and played 100% of games at every position. One of the things you can do is filter by position and you can set the threshold for position at however many games you want. So I usually lower it to 5 percent if i want to capture all major leaguers but in this case i set it to 100 of games at a certain position and then i just uh looked to see where 2013 ranked

and so i i went um uh i went position by position and in fact uh this is a case where the evidence supports the kind of half-formed hypothesis that there are fewer one-dimensional players or that players are being deployed more creatively. So I'm going to go position by position and you'll notice the trend. At Catcher, there were 28 players last year who played exclusively catcher uh which is the lowest number since 1998 16 seasons this ranked 16th uh first baseman there were 11 which is one more than the lowest since 1998 second baseman there were 16 such players uh which was 12th out of 16 uh third base there were 10 players who played exclusively third base which is 15th out of 16 seasons shortstop 22 which was 11th left field had four which is

one more than the lowest ever center field there were 15 and that was ninth out of 16 and then the the closest thing so that's almost the median. And then right field, there were eight, which is tied with a whole bunch of others for the median. So the best we can manage is median. All the others were below average and generally in the bottom two or three. So this feels pretty convincing. And sort of like what we talked about with stolen bases, where the trend away from stolen bases happened so abruptly after years of stolen bases sort of moving upward, all of a sudden it just totally turned around and we couldn't figure out why. This feels like a fairly recent phenomenon. 2012 was generally in the lower lower the lower portion although not as extreme 2011 skewed a little low but otherwise if you start looking at the top of these lists

um there uh you see you know the for instance the most catchers who were exclusively catchers was 2004 most first baseman was 2009 Most left fielders was 2008. Most right fielders 2008. Most center fielders 2010. Catchers in 2011, the highest one, 2011 was almost the highest. And so this is a pretty sudden thing that has happened. And so I found that actually rather interesting. And so I wonder, do you think that this is a result of teams following the raised lead? Or are we just sort of, or is it conceivable that it's a different breed of player? That it's without having quite the, I hear you clicking, Ben. Sorry.

Just so you know. I don't mind it. I just want to let you know that I hear you. Do you, or is it a different breed of player that's a little more athletic, a little bit more flexible? Is it a turn away? I don't know. It could conceivably be a turn away from prioritizing defense.

If that's happened, and feeling like players can move positions much more fluidly, or it could be that defensive metrics are better, and we have a better appreciation for which positions a player can play without losing anything. I figure there are various possibilities for why it might happen, although I'm not sure any of those convince me. Do you have an idea?

Maybe it's a better appreciation for replacement level, and how the worst thing you can do potentially is to play someone who's just, you know, taking up plate appearances and contributing nothing. And that more and more teams are making an effort to have someone who can, someone at any position who can, you know, slide into the lineup and be a positive or at least not be a negative. I listened to an interview with Sam Grossman, who's an analyst with the Reds from last year. He was on C. Trent's podcast and C. Trent at the end asked him what he thought the current, your standard question about what Moneyball is today, what is the big inefficiency now. And Grossman said that he thought, or at least what he was willing to admit off the top of his head,

was the multi-position player. And the Reds, I think, had just signed Skip Schumacher, who was supposed to be that guy. So maybe, I don't know, maybe it is that. I don't know whether it's that players are just more athletic today and therefore there are more players who are capable of playing multiple positions at a competent level that could have something to do with it.

Russell Carlton wrote an article for BP about, I don't know, the Ben Zobrist effect, I think he called it. And I think he put the value of having a multi-position guy at pretty small, like half a win or something, over what his warp would say just based on his stats, just from being able to sub him in, to not use someone worse, to have some flexibility. And it actually didn't account, I think, for the planning aspect, which is that if you are Andrew Friedman and you know that you have Ben Zobrist

and you need to have a second baseman and you need to have a right fielder. But you have some flexibility in filling those positions because Zobrist can go either way. You could stick him in at either place so you have the freedom to pursue the best deal or the best player you can get for the money. If that happens to be a second baseman, great. If it's a right fielder, great. And you can just put Zobrist in the other place so that it increases your options from a planning perspective, which is probably something that's even more difficult to account for.

So those things. I think that we might be answering this from the wrong direction, though, because what this shows isn't really that there are necessarily more utility types. It shows that guys who are not utility types are being used in slightly more utility-like fashion. It's not that there's more Skip Schumacher in the game or more Nick Punto, although there might be a little bit. It's really that, you know, I'm not going to be able to come up with a name off the top of my head. But, you know, players are sort of being asked to play different positions or to move around a little bit more, right? Isn't that probably what we're

talking about? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's not. Maybe there are more players who are capable of doing that. Yeah, we don't know whether it's that they're more capable of doing that or they're just being asked to do things that they weren't asked to do before. I'm sorry. I feel like I was a little curt on the clicking. I didn't mean to be curt. I was speaking so quickly that it created a curt response.

I don't even know why I said anything. So, apologies for that. I have a quick trivia or quick quiz for you. As I noted, left field was the position where there were the fewest all-at-one position guys. There were

four last year, four players who played nothingone position guys. There were four last year. Four players who played nothing but left field. Don't you start typing. Don't you go use a play index here. I will say that for all the greatness that play index is, it's the greatest thing in the world, but it has ruined trivia. Everybody just got the answer on the tip of their fingers. Who are the four players who last year played 20 games or more

and didn't play any position but left field? Crawford? Nope. Ludwig? Nope. Well, I'm done. Ryan Braun, who has already played another position this year. Michael Brantley, who I'm checking, has already played another position this year.

Holiday? Not Holiday. He did in 2004. He was on this list in 2004 and 2008 and 2005 and 2009. Four-timer, but not last year. So Alex Gordon, who so far is all left field this year, and Roger Kieschnick. That one would have taken me a while.

I was sort of hoping you would get the first three really easily and then insist on going through every left fielder if i got roger kishnick first and then was stumped on the other one yeah he uh he hasn't played yet in the majors this year so he's still safe although he has played uh in triple a year, and he has only played right field in AAA. One last thing about this. The reason that I originally started looking is just because I was fiddling around with how many players there have been total in baseball, and I'm fascinated by the way that the number of players that get used has been going up. And I assume the answer has something to do with bullpen usage but i'm not sure i can

make that make sense i don't know why that would matter but um uh in 19 1997 which was the last year that last year i should say last year there were 1304 players who appeared in the majors that's an all-time record. So even though it's been 16 years since expansion, it continues to go up, setting new records almost every year. And so by comparison, in 1997, the last year before expansion, there were 1,120 players. So 180 more players are playing now than used to play. players so 180 more players are playing now than used to play and uh it's interesting that they've found 180 players who are qualified to play and i so then i was looking at how many players were under replacement level uh thinking well maybe the 180 are all below replacement level and the exact almost the exact same percentage are under replacement level now as

were it's actually 35 in 2013 with the larger pool and 36 in 1997 with the smaller pool but uh it then occurred to me that i believe that baseball references replacement level uh is actually fixed in a way that it's fixed to the that basically it it it reacts to basically it reacts to the uh to the league in a way that like the same number of wins have to always exist or something like that i forget i got confused but i guess what i'm saying is it's not a coincidence that that this is like replacement level has changed because of this, right? Yes. So, so that's just a coincidence. That's not a coincidence. That's by design, but still 180 more players. I wonder how high we can go because presumably this will

keep going. Um, I wonder how many will be the max. I wonder how many players major league baseball could possibly cram into its diamonds. Well, we talked about how high the percentage of lefty-on-lefty pitcher versus batter plate appearances could go, so maybe that's the same question. Yeah, yeah. How short can the average start and average relief outing be? All right, this question, this is actually two related. How short can the average start and average relief outing be? All right, this question, this is actually two related questions and sort of related to the one that we just answered. This one comes from Kevin in Toronto.

As a lifelong Tigers fan with the news that Jose Iglesias is gone for the season, I started to think about how the late inning defensive replacement is becoming less commonplace. Given that most teams now carry a 12 or 13 man pitching staff, this means fewer bench players and fewer opportunities to carry that defensive wizard. My question, who leads MLB in appearances in the field without getting an official plate appearances in a plate appearance in 2013? And how many did he have as this number declined over time? This is not a player who played in 70 games and never got a played appearance. He's just asking how many games they appeared in where they didn't get a played appearance.

Yeah, so this is also kind of a play index question. So I just looked quickly, and last year the leader in games played in which that player did not have a played appearance was Sam Fold with 40 such games. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. Of course, he was running a lot, I'm sure. But he would have pinch run some of them.

Yeah, this includes pinch run. I could, let's see, if I take pinch run off, then Sam fold. He's still at the top with 37, so it doesn't actually change it that much. Okay, so I just kind of cherry picked other years, just, you know, round numbers. So that was 2013. just you know round numbers so that was 2013 so if you go back to say uh 1980 um it's a bigger number 1980 mick kelleher played in 54 games without getting a plate appearance in those games in 1970 jose arcia played in 51 games like that. In 1960, Al Spangler played in 52. So it was in the low 50s in 1960, 1970, and 1980.

But if you go back to 1950, then the high is only 32, Joe Collins. If you go back to 1930, the high is only 21, Ray Gardner. So it probably has something to do with the offensive environment as well as how rosters are constructed. I mean, 1930 was a big offense era. 1950 was a big offense era. So that maybe has something to do with it. Of course, there were fewer games then also so um i i don't know which it's more closely tied to but a related question we

got from venite said yeah wait wait can i just throw something in here yes uh i i just looked at the leaders since 1998, sticking with my 1998. And a friend of the podcast, Gabe Kapler, is near the top with 109. Uh-huh. 17th overall. But the other thing is that the guy who leads by a lot, in fact, is actually, I'm ashamed to say this, I've never heard of him. He's a player who did this 206 times,

and probably everybody else has heard of him. I've heard of every name on this list, I swear it. Except I've never heard of Charles Gibson with a P. Do you know Charles Gibson? Yeah, I couldn't tell you anything about him, really. Was he on the Braves?

He was not. He was never on the Braves. Well, I clearly don't know much about Charles Gibson. Not a base stealer. Although he did pinch run, but could play a few positions. Plus 12 defender in 370 career games. So Vinit also asked about defensive replacements. He said, does it make sense to have defensive replacements in the late innings?

One, defensive replacements are generally made in the last one to two innings when either the setup man or the closer is in to pitch. Two, setup and closers have higher strikeout and walk rates than starters, meaning they use defense the least. So it stands to reason, shouldn't defensive replacements actually be the starters with an offensive replacement made in the third or fourth inning? That I don't know about, but it does seem like defensive replacements probably make less sense than they used to. Just based on the fact that the league-wide strikeout rate has gone up,

there are fewer balls in play, and when defensive replacements tend to come in in the eighth or ninth inning, that's when the highest strikeout rates, highest strikeout rate guys are in. Whereas, you know, in 1930, 1950, the ninth inning was probably still the starter. And at that point, he was probably less effective and maybe was giving up more balls in play. Whereas now you are allowing a lot fewer balls in play in those innings. So you would think that the value of a defensive replacement has declined in the modern era, right?

That stands to reason, I would think. Charles Gibson was a 63rd round pick and made $1.6 million. Uh-huh. Okay. But I agree with everything you said. Okay. 21% of his appearances were as a starter. Wow. How many years?

Over the course of seven. Wow. Interesting career. Maybe eight. Might have been eight. Mostly with the Mariners, but then the one team per year at the end for the final four years. I once compelled Russell Carlton to do an article on whether there was a pinch, a defensive replacement penalty equivalent to the pinch hit penalty where a guy comes in off the bench and he's not as good at the plate.

And I think he didn't really find any evidence of a defensive replacement penalty in terms of fielding. But we've been asked that before. Well, I wondered that and I eventually asked him to do it. But I think Vinit has a point and that dovetails with Kevin's question. and that dovetails with Kevin's question. So the number has declined a bit over time, at least if you compare it to the more recent decades.

But if you compare it to previous decades where offense was high, then it has not really declined. And it probably should decline for the reasons that Vinit brings up. So that's defensive replacements. All right. So we are finished.

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