Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 588: The Emails That the Winter Meetings Didn’t Want You to Hear

Episode Date: December 17, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about baseball aesthetics, baseball myths, and trades involving only big leaguers, then discuss the Dodgers’ Brett Anderson signing.

Making believe we know it all Lighting up of an understanding Nothing else going on All of the words to change your mind Cause they're lost when you put the letter back in the drawer If I stood before you now You couldn't put me away anymore Letters don't count

Letters don't, letters don't count Letters don't count Letters don't count Letters don't count Good morning and welcome to episode 588 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Fine, thank you. Good. Going to do some listener emails today. Long, long delayed listener email show. Looking forward to it. Me too. Anything to say before we begin? Yeah, I just want to bring up something that is related to our ongoing non-revelatory rumors series, did you read Graham Frisbee's piece on the winter meetings? Uh-huh. It was good, wasn't it? Yeah, sure.

It was like one of the best things written by anyone in the last month and one of the six or seven best things that Grant has written in the last week. Right. He went out there looking for a scoop. That was the frame of his trip down there, is this guy who doesn't get scoops was going to go find a scoop, which is a good topic to write about. And he's got this interesting section, which I'm going to read to you,

where he found out that scoops are not what you think they are. And so I'm going to just read. You want to know the truth? I got tons of scoops. Within an hour of getting to the bar on Sunday, I met someone reputable telling me of an offer the national supposedly made involving two excellent players for major leaguers total that was rejected by the other team would have been a hell of a rumor would have made been something i could have

written two thousand words on with a big old smile on my face it could have been a tweet that would have made ripples for five maybe six minutes can you imagine except it was off the record. Everything is off the record. I heard about players who were probably traded because their teams didn't want to deal with a 50-game suspension in the middle of next season. I heard about players who really, really like to smoke weed from one of their agents. And I heard Lester to the Cubs about 600 times before it happened. And this is an important thing to note with regards to seemingly non-revelatory rumors. I think we have to assume that the rumors often have about 8,000 pounds of credible reporting,

or at least credible gossip, behind them, and that because of these fuzzy lines between what's off the record, what's background, what's not for attribution, and the distinction between those categories, the writers are really trying to sort of get what they know out there, but they can't say anything. And so they do it with as little actual information as possible. actual information as possible. And so when you see something that says Diamondbacks may consider signing Brian Bannister, I don't know why I said Brian Bannister, it's probably not always, that's what makes this impossible, that's what makes rumors difficult to value, it probably often has a lot more to it than that. The writer knows, the writer might know that they've had, that they've declared internally that he is their guy and that they are going to go as far as it takes to get him.

But he can't say that. And a lot of non-revelatoriness is in the writer's mind not an accident and not a shortcoming so much as the maximum he can get away with. It is designed, it is a carefully crafted non-revelatory rumor that nonetheless reveals to those of us who want to read a lot into these things quite a bit. And so that is just a quick note in defense of the non-revelatory rumor mongerer. Okay, Worth pointing out. And we've kind of moved away from this segment in recent shows, but I also wanted to bring something up that is related to it, distantly related to it. We don't talk about politics much on this show, but there was a political tweet that some people mentioned to me,

sent to me today, or mentioned in the Facebook group as a possible non-revelatory rumor. This was a Jeb Bush tweet, former governor of Florida, current member of the Bush family, who said, I am excited to announce I will actively explore the possibility of running for president of the United States. Does this reveal anything to you? I'm not sure specifically what Jeb Bush has done, but I do know that presidents, the first stage to declaring is it's actually a procedural thing. You have to create a committee. Exactly, an exploratory committee. And the

exploratory committee is a non-revelatory sounding word for an actually revelatory procedural event. So I don't know if that's what Jeb Bush is doing, but it's possible it is. It could be, yes. He didn't say that. His tweet linked to a Facebook post that also doesn't say anything about forming a committee. It just says actively exploring the possibility of running. But maybe that is just code for the same thing. And maybe it just tells us that he's going to do that, even if he hasn't done that.

So maybe it reveals something. But the language is similar to baseball rumors that we have made fun of on this show. Okay, let's do some emails. This one comes from Clark, who addresses it to Ben and Sam, but mostly Sam should Brett Gardner be considered in the best player, never to play in an all-star game or receive an MVP vote discussion. He's only two wins above replacement behind Nick Marcakis, 25.2 to 23.2 at baseball reference in six years of service time compared to

Marcakas is nine since 2010 Marquesas has accumulated just 8.3 war Gardner put up four war seasons in both 2013 and 2014 they are the same age Marquesas neck problems may allow Gardner to pass him in career war this year maybe you've discussed Gardner and I just forgot. Yeah. I think, as I answered the listener, I think that probably what happened is when I was doing this search, I was probably looking at a career war leaderboard. And my guess is that when you're looking for players who've never received an MVP vote or an all-star game nod, there's probably not a lot of guys at, say, 25 career war, and infinite guys at 18 war. You quickly go from going, oh, this guy is interesting, to, oh look, all of these people

fit. It's a fairly small margin between those two groups. I think that probably Marcakis had cleared the mass and therefore stood relatively alone, and Gardner was in the mass. At the time, it was like a 23 to 19 edge. That edge has narrowed. And yeah, I think that it was a flaw in the way I was looking for this, because I think that, yeah, certainly Brett Gardner has a very good case for that, don't you? Yeah, absolutely.

They're now, yeah, now only— is a very good case for that, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. They're now only... I've liked Brett Gardner for a while now, and he's turned into an excellent player. I would guess that you think Brett Gardner is a better player than Marquegas? Right now? No, in his career. Yeah, well, it's, I don't know,

on a per-plate appearance or per-game basis, certainly he is. He hasn't played as long, so in total value, I guess they are pretty equivalent, as Clark pointed out. But Gardner has made the most of that time. And I would guess that if you polled the average baseball fan who watches Sunday Night Baseball, it would be something like 9-1 voting for Marquegas. Yeah, I would think so. Although, I don't know. I mean, aren't Yankees supposed to be overrated, if anything? Yankees are supposed to be, but I don't think Gardner is.

An underrated Yankee, which is maybe not an oxymoron. Yeah. Okay, this question. Good question. No, I mean, yeah, Gardner. gardner the funny thing though is that i'm i would actually root for gardner to get a vote i think because he is underrated and because part of maybe part of what makes marquecas interesting is that we are talking about what is essentially a contest for the most underrated player and yet the leader is a player who i consider overrated.

That's what has made it delightful that it's Marcakis. He sort of transcends the genre. He has flipped it around. Time is a flat circle. It just doesn't make any sense that Marcakis is the guy. That's right. Okay. Well, in that sense, I'm still rooting for Marcakis though. He's a better, he's a more fitting leader for this category. Agreed. Okay, this question comes from Luis who says, Hi guys, with so many surprising moves this offseason, I've noticed a spike in quote-unquote what X team is doing articles and comments.

What the A's are doing trading Donaldson. What the Red Sox are doing filling their rotation with ground ball pitchers. What the White Sox are doing or the Cubs or the Dodgers. What do you think of the concept? Off the top of my head, I think doing something involves major payroll change, major personnel change, and apparent changes in a team's philosophy. But I'm sure you can come up with more components. So what does it take for a team to be doing something in the eyes of the baseball community? So what does it take for a team to be doing something in the eyes of the baseball community? Do you want to answer first or should I?

Well, I think, I mean, he hit on a few of the major components of this. I think a big part of it is just a team playing against type somehow. The Marlins awarding the biggest contract in North American professional sports is a good example of what is Team X doing? Because this is the Marlins seemingly operating in a way that we have not seen them operate before. And yet, is it truly different or is it not? That's worth lots of articles and tea leaf reading. and tea leaf reading. There's, I think, the kind that he sort of alluded to with the Red Sox ground ball pitchers thing, where if a team starts targeting a player of a certain type

all of a sudden, that's always very interesting. If you can find some commonality to all the players that a team has acquired lately, then you can kind of come to the conclusion that maybe they think that sort of player is undervalued. And then you can look into whether that's true, whether there's any evidence that that's true, how much they're undervalued. So that's what we're always doing with the A's, with the fly ball hitters and everything. There's always some new, I mean, that's your typical, what's the new or what's

the next inefficiency in baseball? That's always a popular topic. So if a team seems to have found it or be acting in a way that's consistent with their having found it, then that's worth talking about. And just, I mean, a lot of turnover, I guess, is always interesting. If a team just loses a lot of free agents or is incredibly active, like the Dodgers making five moves in one day or whatever it was, that's worth talking about. And obviously they just completely changed their front office, so that is worth talking about too. Is there anything else that stands out to you? Yeah, like you alluded to, it's much more interesting to review a trend in baseball

than it is to review one player who you're probably familiar with. And so for a writer, there's going to be a strong incentive for you to stretch beyond the player himself into a strategy and turning it into a baseball strategy. I also think that, you know, like what they say during political seasons when they talk about how the gaffes, the gaffes that tend to have legs, the gaffes that tend to hurt candidates the most are, and I'm going to quote here the Washington Post, the worst ones are the ones that confirm people's pre-existing suspicions or fit into an easy narrative. And I think that's true for positive or negative. It amplifies the significance of a deal when you can fit

it into a narrative that you already believe about a team. It just raises your ability to talk about that trade like eightfold. exactly eightfold. That's the specific calculation of how many folds of extra discussion you can have. And so when you can fit it into that narrative, it's much, much easier to write about it and have it be kind of more lasting. I mean, basically these players, there's 800 players that are existing constantly. And if we were to just assess what the player is at all times or where he fits on a depth chart, that's useful. We do that. That's interesting. It's certainly valuable to baseball writing, I think. But it's not the special occasion. And when you can write a piece about um a trend that's the special occasion

yeah it's like the mariners signing nelson cruz or something as you as you did you wrote about not just cruise but about the mariners and their long pursuit of cruise and their pursuit of cruise type hitters and power hitters and how they seem to have been fixated on that particular quality for a while now. So that just adds a lot of flavor to the transaction analysis when it's not just how much is Nelson Cruz making and how much is Nelson Cruz worth. It's why does this team like Nelson Cruz and players like Nelson Cruz so much. Okay, let's do an Eric Hartman question who says there has been a large increase

in Major League Player for Major League Player trades, notably starting with Leicester and Cespedes in July. It's easy enough to analyze all player for prospect trades on a macro level of one team is going for it next year, the other is not. Are the player-for-player trades naturally more interesting and pleasing because they require some thought of how they impact two ostensibly contending teams? They're more interesting and pleasing. They're easier to analyze, I would say. Well, I guess they're easier in the sense that they're not so obvious. The motives aren't so obvious.

With a prospect for a major leaguer, the motives of each team are obvious, and there's really nothing you can say about them. I mean, you can say, well, geez, it feels like they should have got a better prospect or something like that, but you don't really know, about them. You can say, well, geez, it feels like they should have got a better prospect or something like that, but you don't really know and you have to assume that if there was a better prospect out there, they would have taken him and maybe they have a different view of that prospect. You certainly don't have the best view of that prospect. You're not the prospect expert. I find those moves to be very difficult to say. Pretty much all you can say about those moves is good timing, right?

The team that got better, good timing. The team that sold, also good timing. They picked good timing to do moves that were geared at a specific time. But as far as measuring the value of one player to another, I find that very challenging. I always have a hard time with that. Trying to figure out how to balance the need to win now versus some potential marginal runs that you'll pick up three and a half years from now. It's a very tricky calculus, and so I find it a bit challenging.

With the player for player, it's easy to say which player is better, right? And so... Although we've seen a mix in these trades where it's been player for player and also prospects, like in the Donaldson deal where you have to figure out how much worse is Brett Laurie than Josh Donaldson and then do the prospects make up for that difference or more than make up for it so you kind of have to do both at the same time which makes it more difficult but I don't know is more difficult is also probably more interesting so it's both right I don't know if it's more pleasing but it's more pleasing, but it's easier to write about, or at least it's easier

to write something interesting when it's not just your standard seller and buyer trade. Yeah, I think it's probably more interesting. I don't know that I view these through the lens of interesting. They're all to me roughly equally interesting. Some of them are harder to create a theme for an analysis of it, and so maybe that's the same as interesting. But I guess the macro trend itself is somewhat interesting to me. I thought it was very, for instance, at the trade deadline, I thought it was extremely interesting that teams that were getting better at the deadline had to do it. It would have been

all prospects and or financial considerations. And so just the fact that teams are having to do that, that your veterans themselves are the pieces you sell off when you're adding veterans is interesting to me. But I guess it depends on the players. Lester Cespedes was interesting. Yeah, that was interesting, but not, well, that was interesting because it involved one team that was really going for it and another that had been expected to contend

but was punting for the short term, but not for a very, but for the very, very short term and intending to contend the next year. So there was a lot of interesting stuff going on with that trade. But it was partially the players involved and partially where the teams were. But that's kind of the interesting thing about all these deals. It's that no one is really out of it. But it's all you're analyzing short-term impact for both sides, really. Even if one is shorter than the other, it's not like, well, this will help this team be better in five years or something,

which is kind of interesting if maybe that team is stockpiling tons of prospects, but not that interesting otherwise. Now it's analyzing Oakland in 2014 and also analyzing both teams in 2015. So I think I prefer it as a writer. I don't know whether I would care otherwise. Did you find, though, that Porcello, Cespedes was fun? Because to me that felt, like, considering the quality of players, like if Cespedes had been traded to Arizona for prospects

and Porcello had been traded to Cincinnati for prospects, those would have been two fun moves to write up. And instead, Porcello for Cespedes was no fun at all. Like, we didn't talk about it. Nobody talked about it. It was almost entirely interesting for its effect on your keeper league and nothing else. That's true. So that was right.

That's true. So that was right. I mean, that was two contenders, two current contenders, just feeling a weakness on each other's roster with a strength from the other's roster, which is, yeah, there wasn't much to say about it that you wouldn't say about the usual buyer-seller thing. I don't know. It's kind of interesting in that it's players we know at least, whereas if you and I write about prospects, it's always like we're going on secondhand information or we're asking a prospect person to send us something about that guy and just looking at his numbers and reading scouting reports, but he's not real to us in the same way, whereas these guys both kind of were. So I don't know. Mildly interesting. Anyway, this is a question from Graham, or really it's a response follow-up to something we talked about Monday. He says, on the last episode,

Sam mentioned that teams with more than one first round draft pick were more likely to sign free agents with a draft pick penalty. And he concluded that this was because they undervalued the draft pick. I have an alternative take. Could it not be because they have, by virtue of being awarded a compensatory draft pick, lost a good free agent of their own and therefore have a hole on their roster? As a Giants fan, I'm thinking of them here. Because they lost Pablo Sandoval, they may think they have to go out and sign a star, Scherzer or Shields, to appease the fans. Okay, it's a pitcher replacing a third baseman, but it shows the team's intent. Anyway, just a thought.

Um, yeah. I think that's plausible. And it's also, I think it's also the case that you're more likely, even without that reaction motive element to it, teams that are likely to sign a big free agent are also more likely to have that big free agent who leaves because they could afford to have signed him earlier, to have traded for him when he was getting expensive in arbitration. So, it would be worth looking at case by case basis to see whether that's happening. I don't know that, I don't think

I, anytime I see appease the fans, I think, probably not appease the fans. I don't think appeasing the fans is a very significant motivator in moves like these, in moves at all, at least anymore. It feels like it kind of was more in a previous era, but I don't ever really get the appease the fans vibe from any teams. Maybe teams have just not talked about it as much, or maybe we're better at analyzing moves, and so we don't just lean on the appease the fans vibe for many teams. Maybe teams have just not talked about it as much, or maybe we're better at analyzing moves and so we don't just lean on the appease the fans element. But I don't think appeasing the fans happens much. But yeah, it makes sense that if you lose, I mean, Pablo Sandoval was making quite a bit of money, and when he leaves, it frees up some money. So just in that sense, there's maybe more of a likelihood that they would be buyers. So I wouldn't rule it out, but I wouldn't conclude it's true

without looking at it on a case-by-case basis. Graham, by the way, closes his email by pointing out that if either of us ever thought of giving up the podcast, which he says, please no, Grant Brisby would be an excellent replacement. All caps on the excellent. I sense that he is not totally opposed to one of us giving up the podcast if it meant Grant being the replacement. I think Grant might be opposed to one of us giving us the podcast if it meant Grant would be the replacement. Probably. I think I would fire Ben and Ben would fire me

if Grant were attainable every day. Grant would be here if he were available every day. Ben, I'm going to embarrass Ben, and we'll see if he edits this out. But after we did episode 500 with Grant and Jeff, like two seconds later, Ben G chatted me in seriousness. I wonder if we could do that weekly. Yeah, sure.

I'm not editing that out just in case they're listening and they're interested. Okay, want to do Play Index? Yeah, sure. I can't remember if I've ever gone with this basic idea before, but I've always been really, I think, almost one of the first things that appealed to me about Play Index when I first got it probably five-ish years ago, I think, maybe four to six years ago,

was, this is weird, but I love seeing the bottom of teams' all-time saves lists. I love looking at who a team's 14th most saves is because your closer is, I mean, closer is a big deal. There's only 30 closers, and Who your closer is defines your team while he is your closer. He is on the banner outside your stadium. That is one of your stars. Yet, closers are often going in and out of jobs. Some of them close, not just get saves, but some of them close for like four months of their life and never before and never again. And then some of them are on a different team

every year. And so you see the most random names on teams' leaderboards for saves and you forget these guys ever played for that team. And so what I've done, Ben, is I've designed a quiz to embarrass you. Oh, no. So I've got, I went through Play Index, and I looked at each team's saves leaderboard, career saves leaderboard. And I have found, I've gotten a guy who is 20th on his team,

19th on his team, different guy, 19th, different guy, 18th, different guy, 19th on his team, different guy 19th, different guy 18th, different guy 17th, and I found one for each position from 20th to 10th. And I'm going to name the player, and you're going to name the team. Okay. I don't know whether this is to make me feel better or to make Ryan Webb and Matt Albers feel better. No. Ryan Webb with no saves is actually like ninth on the raise all-time list. In a tie. Okay. All right. So 20th place in franchise history is Octavio Dottel.

Name the team. Tigers? It is not. is Octavio Dottel. Name the team. Tigers? It is not. He is. I think he might have been like 13th or something on the Tigers. No. Good guess.

Good guess. The Oakland A's. Octavio Dottel is the 20th best closer in Oakland A's history. Wow. When did that? So that was, let's say, 2004, 2005. That was a big move when it happened. That was peak Billy Bean. I couldn't fawn over that move enough.

Because he had been getting closers for cheap, and they'd been turning out good. And that was right when all the Money Belt stuff was exploding and it just seemed like he could print closers out of nothing. And Dottel was a little different than the other guys because not only was he not being paid much, although they did have to give up something to get him, but not only was he not being paid much, but he was an elite reliever just not getting saves.

Unlike, like Billy Koch didn't seem like an elite reliever, just not getting saves. Unlike Billy Koch, didn't seem like an elite reliever until he got the saves. Totel seemed like an elite reliever even before, and then he wasn't that good. Totel got one save for Detroit. Oh, yeah, okay. So he wasn't. You picked the guy who pitched for 13 teams. That's not a fair way to start. Yeah, but how many of those teams is he 20th on the all-time saves list?

I don't know, but he has saves for all but four of those teams. I like Octavio Dottel. Pick the teams that Dottel does not have a save for. That's a good trivia question.

Four teams that Octavio Dottel pitched for and does not have a save for? That's a good trivia question. Four teams. Four teams that Octavio Dottel pitched for and does not have a save for. Yeah. All right. I'm going to think about this. Okay, so he pitched for 13 teams? Uh-huh. All right, so not the Angels, not the A's,

not the Astros. I will say the Blue Jays, not the Astros. I will say the Blue Jays, not the Braves. I don't know about the— You're guessing Blue Jays? Yeah. He had one save for the Blue Jays. Oh! This is difficult.

Yes, it is. I'll say Phillies. Phillies. Octavio Dottel did not pitch for the Phillies. He managed to find a team that Dutelle did not pitch for. All right. All right. I will say, okay, Yankees.

Yes. Yankees is one. I will not say that. Royals. Royals. Royals. Royals, he had... Oh, wait, I scrolled down. Royals.

Royals, he had 11 saves for. Really? Did I guess Phillies? You did. Unwisely. I will say Dodgers. Nope. One save for the Dodgers.

This is probably the least entertaining game to listen to that we've ever played. Unbelievable. This is impossible. Cardinals. Cardinals. Two saves. Unbelievable. You're kidding me.

I can't go on. I can't go on. I have to quit. You've already named one team that he didn't play for. So, yeah. Well, one team that you ruled out very quickly is a correct answer. The Braves. I didn't know he played for them.

He pitched seven and two-thirds innings for the Braves, zero saves. The other two teams are the Mets, somewhat surprising. He pitched a whole 85 and a third innings for them. Actually, he was a starter for most of that time. So no saves for the Mets and no saves for the Rockies. Octavio Totel pitched for the Rockies for eight games. Yeah, the Rockies was going to be my next guess. I didn't know he pitched for the Mets. I wouldn't have guessed that he pitched for the Mets in 20 guesses. He only has 109 career saves, actually. Yeah. You know, he said, I don't know if he's going to, but he missed last year with

he missed last year, right? Didn't he have TJ last year? Or was it the year before? I thought that he missed all of 2014 and wanted to come back. He was saying he wanted to come back after missing a year, so I don't know if he's still planning to, or

if that was old. Yeah, I don't know. he's still planning to or if that was old. Yeah, I don't know. His BP player card says that he was on the 60-day DL for most of 2013 with right elbow inflammation. He did retire on October 3rd. Just a few weeks ago. I didn't do the BP way back of his comments. He announced his retirement on October 3rd. His career strikeout rate is the best in history for a right-handed pitcher. Wow. The best in history for a right-handed pitcher with at least 900 innings, which

rules out almost all relievers. Right. Okay. All right. So number, Mike Stanton is 19th in career saves for a team which team? Mike Stanton I mean I don't remember Stanton getting saves for the Yankees so maybe he picked one up now

and then and it seems like it would be too obvious though because that's the team that he's probably most associated with uh yeah i don't know i guess i'll go with that uh it's the mariners my favorite thing about my favorite thing about mike stanton is that he was i mean he's a loogie he's just he's nothing he's a soft tossing loogie who was drafted in the 13th round. Doesn't seem like anything. And we don't think about

this, but before he came up, he was an elite prospect. And in fact, if the Marlins had just called Giancarlo Stanton up a few weeks earlier, then Mike Stanton would have ended up with a higher Baseball America prospect ranking than Giancarlo Stanton ever achieved.

But it didn't happen. Stanton got one more year and ended up being fifth in the baseball team. Wait, when did Stanton pitch for the Mariners? Are you sure he pitched for the Mariners? I don't think he pitched for the Mariners. Somebody named Mike Stanton did. Oh, yeah. A different Mike Stanton?

Must be. Oh, okay. It was the Stanton from the 70s and 80s then. Oh, well, I wouldn't have used that one. Rough. 23 saves for the Mariners at Stanton. Wouldn't have used it if I'd known. My apologies.

That's okay. All right. Randy Choate, 18th in saves for what franchise? Oh, Randy Choate. All right. So let's see. Choate has pitched for the Cardinals and the Diamondbacks and the Yankees. He came up with the Yankees.

And I'm probably missing some teams. Did he pitch for the Rays? Did he pitch for the Rays? He did. I'll go with the Rays. You got it. He's got one. One for two in the fair fight category. Let's see. How many career saves does Randy Choate have?

He had five for the Rays, by the way. And he has six lifetime. All right. Uh-huh, and he has six lifetime. All right, Danny Baez, 17th for what team? Oh, man. I don't really remember Baez beyond the Rays, but you probably wouldn't double up on the Rays, would you? And Baez was like the primary closer for the Rays,

as I recall, briefly at least. Did Baez pitch for the, oh man. Didn't he pitch for the Orioles one year? Is it the Orioles? It's not the Orioles. It's the Indians. It's the Indians. Huh, okay.

Frank Francisco. Frank Francisco, 16th for what team? Rangers? Blue Jays. Jonathan Broxton, 15th for which team? Reds? Royals. Jose Mesa, 14th for which team? Oh, no.

Oh, that's... Another guy who was on every team. Jose Mesa. All right. Well, I remember him primarily as a Phillies closer, so I feel like he probably got too many saves for the Phillies, and he must have had too many saves for the Indians because he was with them for a while.

Pirates? Mariners. This is the hardest game we've ever played. It is the hardest game. And yet you got one. Although Randy, RJ's random number generating free agent rumor tracker also gets some right. Jorge Julioio 13th

met did he pitch for the mets probably diamond bags all right lee smith 12th oh come on oh lee smith so it's like the guy with the second most saves ever. I guess. Red Sox. Angels. Who gets their Bina? 11th. Tigers. 17th for Tigers.

Oh, nice. Yeah. Oh, wait, but we're not doing 17th. Oh, okay. Red Sox. And then last one, Francisco Cordero, 10th. Man, where did Francisco Cordero go besides the Reds? Oh, well, he came up with Texas.

He probably got too many saves for Texas, but whatever. Texas. Milwaukee. He probably got too many saves for Texas, but whatever. Texas. Milwaukee. Every single one of these guys cost you your waiver position in a fantasy league. That was painful for everyone.

All right. So if you want to torture your friends with impossible Play Index quizzes, you can subscribe to the Play Index at baseballreference.com using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Okay, this is one that you said you wanted me to ask, although you didn't have an answer at the time, and I still don't think I have an answer and hopefully you have one by now. This is from John who says, are there any

baseball myths that you still hang on to despite evidence to the contrary? For example, and perhaps I'm answering my own question, but there are plenty of others, the myth of lineup protection, which I no longer believe in because the evidence has convinced me, but maybe one of you wants to hang on to the idea that it matters. If you have myths that you still believe in, would you classify them as I'm not convinced that the evidence proves

or disproves that particular point, or as despite the overwhelming evidence, I'm going to hold on to my belief until you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Or perhaps you readily accept when empirical evidence comes along to your satisfaction. There was another Ken Arneson essay not long ago where he listed 10 things that he believes about baseball without having any evidence that they're true. And I almost made that a topic. I was going to have us come up with our own, but then I thought about it for a little while. I couldn't really come up with many good ones, so I didn't make that a topic.

So as for this one, I wouldn't classify it as a myth unless it really had been disproved. If I thought there was still a chance that it might be true, I wouldn't count it. And so maybe it's a better question to be like, what are things that there is no evidence to suggest or there's more evidence to suggest that it's not true than there is to suggest that it is true,

but we still believe it anyway? I don't know. Do you have anything? true but we still believe it anyway i don't know do you have anything uh i when i was growing up my family had total belief in the blowout rule which is that if you blew out a team and then played them the next day you would lose and so we the the definition of a blowout had to be determined and so i think it was decided that it was 9-0 or any 10-run win. So I guess 9, actually I think it was, yeah, 9-0 or any 10-run win. So 9-0, 10-0, 11-1, and so on.

And we believed it wholeheartedly. And so this was a way of making games slightly interesting because if the team was winning 14 to 5 in the ninth inning, you might still be rooting for something. And besides the fact that this doesn't make any sense, we – I mean you could make some sort of narrative where it might make a little sense, perhaps. A little. But I did look at it once when I was writing for the Orange County Register and found nothing. And yet, I still have an emotional response to a blowout. So I would say that's one that emotionally I hang onto. Okay.

I still mention it. If an important game happens and it's a blowout, I'll still mention to my dad, oh, it was a blowout. At least they got him to a blowout. And yet, if you had to put money on the outcome of the next game,

you would probably not factor it in. If I had to put money on the next game, I probably wouldn't follow baseball anymore. I mean, what kind of weird sport would make you put money on it? I mean, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't follow that sport. I'd quit. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have anything. I'm very evidence-driven. If I feel like the evidence has disproved it, then I don't believe it anymore.

Well, but you know the evidence is often wrong or inconclusive i mean but then i wouldn't consider it disproven um oh yeah so i don't know i'm having a hard time coming up with something that i know definitively isn't true and yet still believe to be true. There are things maybe that I would like to be true that I think aren't true. Anyway, I don't know. If anyone has any good ones that they believe, let us know. All right, one more. Let's see what we have here.

Okay, how about this one from Robert? Okay, how about this one from Robert? We talk a fair amount about how various tactical decisions impact how we enjoy the game. Increased pursuit of strikeouts by pitchers and home runs by hitters, bunting, defensive shifts, bullpen usage, etc. While the efficacy of strategic approaches at the front office level is a favorite topic, baseball writers don't talk so much about the aesthetic effects of these decisions. Do you prefer seasons with a few great teams or a larger number of flawed contenders?

Would you rather watch teams with a wider or narrower variance around their expected outcomes in a season? And does your answer change depending on the mean of that distribution? Given the choice between a long run of seasons with likely strong but not elite performance and a big push for contention in one season at the cost of future performance, which would you choose? What's more satisfying, acquiring major league talent over the winter or at the trading deadline? Feel free to generalize. These questions are but a sample from the larger population. Any of those things stand out as more aesthetically pleasing? Any of those things stand out as more aesthetically pleasing?

A lot of people wrote at the end of this past regular season that it was a bad season, that it was a boring season. And I didn't get that impression at all. To me, there might be the rare season that really stands out for some some reason maybe there's a particularly memorable pennant race or or there's some some chase for a record that kind of dominates coverage for the summer that sort of thing but for the most part i feel like every season is good they all deliver as much entertainment as we could want. Some are slightly better than others, but 2014 didn't really strike me as a particularly boring one. If it was one, it totally redeemed itself with the playoffs, which were very good. I think probably

the playoffs, in that they're only a month long long stand out to me as better or worse than average more so than a regular season does regular season is just so long and there's always the same number of games and every team plays them and there's i mean this this season wasn't the greatest for pennant races i guess but and offense was down and maybe some people don't like that but on the whole it was just another season. They're all good seasons. They'll have a lot of things to recommend them. But I don't know.

I like the all-in, I guess. I like the Oakland thing that they did. I mean, I like Oakland going for it and jeopardizing their future more than I enjoy Oakland selling off short term in order to ensure that they aren't terrible in the future. That's less – it's interesting to talk about, but it's not as interesting to watch probably. There was this Wall Street Journal article five years or so ago about how you should make your vacations better. And the key thing is that there should be novelty. So if you go to a new location, that's ideal. If you do, you should make sure you do things that you don't do everywhere else. But even if you have, say, a cabin,

like you have a cabin in the woods and it's your family cabin and you go there all the time, you should make sure that you do different things every time because that's the sort of thing that sticks out in your memory. Otherwise, as we know from many happiness studies, we quickly incorporate any repeated event as just sort of the new bar for normal and it no longer creates happiness, it just creates that new level of what we need to rise above to get happy. For instance, if you have this cabin, you should go to a different restaurant every time and you'll remember it. You should do a different event every time and then that

way you'll remember that specific trip. You won't forget that the trip happened a week after it's gone. In a sense, if the point of a vacation is to be relaxed while you're there and to simply experience and enjoy it while you're there and get away from the regular world, well, you don't have to do that novelty stuff because just getting away from your life and being relaxed and reading and going to the same places you always love and having your comfort restaurants will make you happy. However, if you want that vacation to have a sort of amplitude in your life's experiences and last a bit longer in your memory, you should do different things. And so, as far as what I enjoy while I'm watching it, I don't think I have an aesthetic preference.

However, looking back at what I remember about baseball over the last 30 years, it is certainly the outlier performances. It's the best teams. It's the best performances. It's the wider variance, I would say, between both team quality and results and outcomes and all of those things that create something that you haven't seen before and it stands out creates a sort of richer memory of baseball experiences. And so I would guess that in that philosophical vein, the experience that I'm having in the moment doesn't really matter as much as how much it implants itself into my brain. So I'll go with wider variance, less parity, greater teams, worse teams, and more extreme performances. Okay. And before we end, I wanted to ask you about the Brett Anderson signing for just a minute. line about how it's a low risk, high reward move with a one year contract for a pitcher who's been

injured a lot or any player, but particularly a pitcher. And I saw the same thing with Anderson. And actually, there were a few deals like that this week. There's Anderson and then there was Gavin Floyd signing and Brandon Morrow signing. Also, a of these one-year incentive-laden deals for people who haven't been able to stay healthy. And I swore off these guys a while ago, whenever it was. It was Sean Markham who was the final straw for me after I bought into him being a good deal on one of these one-year contracts and then he got hurt again.

And we talked about that a bit. He got hurt again, and we talked about that a bit. So Brett Anderson, I thought a surprising number of dollars that he got. I don't know whether you agreed, but it's not really interesting to talk about dollars anymore, especially when you're talking about a one-year deal involving the Dodgers. I mean, every one-year deal for the Dodgers is low risk. So the question is more whether there's actually any chance of a high reward, whether that is really even a realistic possibility. What did you think of this move? Don't get it at all. And I think that, like you maybe are saying, the problem is that it's only one year.

It's like even if this works out amazingly and he pitches great for you, then he's gone in a year. Like what you really would want to do, I would think, for a guy like this is convince him that you're going to make him set for life in a way that he otherwise won't be, and you'll give him $20 million, but you get him for six years. And so that way, at least if it pays off, you get him. As it is now, if it pays off, at most they bank an extra win or two, at most, but they're probably going to get nothing. I mean, it seems to me that the far most likely event here is that Brett Anderson throws another 50 innings. It's okay, but not great

50 innings. They get not nearly $10 million worth out of it, even if they do though, so then he's gone. To me, it's a very low upside. That's the problem. Yeah, I don't get it. When the Padres signed Josh Johnson, they at least put that $4 million option in so that if he had been any good last year, which he wasn't, but if he had, then they would have had Josh Johnson for $4 million, which would have been pretty cool. That was half of his salary, guaranteed Salary for 2014 so There was some upside there As it was they declined that option Didn't end up being any upside

But the possibility was there at least So yeah the Brett Anderson Thing kind of mystifies me Other than I don't know If Brett Anderson were healthy Then they'd have a great rotation After signing McCarthy and Bringing back the few guys that they had.

But it sort of mystifies me, other than just Dodgers having tons of money and who cares. How many innings will he pitch? I mean, it's hard to say because he's coming off. I mean, what were his injuries this past year? One of them was just the finger fracture or whatever it was where it's like, did that happen because he's Brett Anderson or did it just happen because he's a pitcher and it happens to anyone?

But he also had a low back injury and back surgery for a bulging disc, which sounds like the sort of thing that can become chronic for certain people. Sounds like the sort of thing that can become chronic for certain people. So I don't know. Maybe, I mean, he hasn't topped 45 innings since 2011. He hasn't topped 100 innings since 2010. So I'll say 50. I was going to say 43. Yeah, he had 43 last year. So I don say 50. I was going to say 43. Yeah, he had 43 last year.

So I don't know. It's a weird one. It is a weird one. I'd like to, when they write the book about the Dodgers 25 years from now and everybody's super honest, I'd like to read about this one. Yeah, me too. All right, so that's it for today. We will be back later this week.

Please send us some emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.