Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 604: PECOTA’s Surprising Pitcher Projections

Episode Date: January 26, 2015

Ben and Sam share their thoughts on some of PECOTA’s most surprising pitcher projections.

Nobody who sees the statue they gonna know who I am. A lot of kids don't know what I even played. I have grandkids and they don't know what I did. They really don't. They never seen it, they don't know. Like for instance I'm with them in Washington, they get the Medal of Freedom award. Barack Obama gave it to me. He'd never seen me play. So I talked to some people.

I said, maybe I'll put a voicemail on the statue, you know, to say who I am. Hey, I'm Ernie Banks. I played at this ballpark over here. This was happening and that was happening. Good morning and welcome to episode 604 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Granton.

Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? All right. Just killing time until the Royal Rumble. Figured there's no better way to do it than by recording a baseball podcast. No better way to do it than by recording a baseball podcast. So you are not a person who routinely tweets about wrestling.

Or about anything, for that matter. That's true. But not about wrestling. I didn't even know that you were. I'm a casual enthusiast. I have a couple of my oldest, closest friends are very, very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about wrestling. And so periodically they invite themselves over to my apartment for a major wrestling event. And I kind of enjoy watching them watch it as much as I enjoy watching it myself. Is this because you have a better setup?

Yes. Is this why they want to come to your house? Yeah. Yes. Um, me neither. All right. So I wanted to talk about, uh, Pakoda and pitchers and we've done, I think we've done versions of this. This is a question that you and I have always had. Uh, we are, well, I'll just explain. Uh, I wrote on Friday about, um, the pitchers whose projections have most changed since last year, which is to say not that their projections are the most different from their performance last year, but their projections are the most different from what their projections were last year. And Pocota sometimes spits out counterintuitive projections because it has a longer memory than you and I might have,

a longer memory than you and I might have. And so we're surprised that it doesn't love a guy as much as we do after a really good year or even two years or sometimes even four years. And so I wrote about the pitchers who most moved Pakoda's needle this year. But I wanted to find out from you whether you think that they moved it enough or moved it too much. If you had to take the over or the under on these guys, which would you take? Does that seem fair? Sure. And I'm going to skip all the minor leaguers because those don't matter.

There's basically like eight guys i think that i would like to bring up or maybe maybe nine ish um so we'll do that and i'll just start with the one that is going to be um i i think based on the emails that uh we've been having um within the staff uh i think that probably the one that jumps out to most people who see the projections this year is going to be Corey Kluber. And so Corey Kluber is projected to have a 4.08 ERA, which in this day and age makes him not very good. And it makes him basically like a one-win pitcher.

And it makes him basically like a one-win pitcher. Like, for instance, he's roughly the same as Scott Acheson. Is that a 4.08 ERA in 2014 offensive environment or what Pakoda thought 2014 offensive environment was going to be? This is in 2015, what Pakoda thinks 2015 is going to be? This is in 2015. What Pocota thinks 2015 is going to be. The piece I wrote, I kept 2004, projected 2004 offensive environment. But now I'm giving you the pure projection as people will see it on hopefully Monday. So it's not like Pocota thinks that he's not worth having on your team. But that's not a very good pitcher, right?

No. So, I can kind of explain why Pagoda thinks that he's worse than Drew Pomeranz. Okay. But, of course, what I want to know is whether you think that it's responsible or just stubborn. Basically, Corey Kluber, like just three years ago, was just terrible, right? I mean, he was the, what was he, the throw-in to the, was it the David, no, what was the Jim Edmonds deal or something like that? Ryan Ludwig. He was the throw-in in the Ryan Ludwig deal, the deal that sent Ryan Ludwig

to the Padres. So that was in 2010. The Indians sent Westbrook to the Cardinals, and Kluber went to the Indians. It was a three-team trade. But Kluber was on the Padres. Yes. So the Padres gave up Kluber to get Ludwig, basically. Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that was a little bit more than four years ago. Kluber was a 26-year-old before he really made the majors and lost his rookie status. In 2012, he had an ERA of five. And then in 2013, he was good. He had a league average ERA, but a fifth that had a lot of analysts thinking there was better there. And then, of course, 2014, he won the Cy Young Award and was the best pitcher in the American League.

So it feels weird to say that the best pitcher in the American League would have an ERA of four this year, but Pocota remembers all of obvious to you? Is it that overwhelming that we just should just acknowledge that in 2100 projections, there's going to be one guy that confounds the system and you should overrule it? Yeah, I think so. I can't really imagine in this current day and age where maybe it's harder to win the Cy Young Award just by winning a bunch of games or something or having some fluky ERA, that you could come up with a Cy Young Award winner who would be projected by people, if not Pocota, to be up a low average starter the following year it seems like a tough player to construct i don't know when we did our our thing early in this podcast run which was recently recapped at banished to the pen the blog of effectively wild listeners who've been recapping old effectively wild episodes we did our thing about r.A. Dickey when he was good, and we kind of put him up against a bunch of other starters,

and we drafted guys that we would want ahead of R.A. Dickey, and we took a bunch of guys, and it turns out we didn't take enough. He ended up being worse the following year than almost everyone we had talked about. But that was R.A. Dickey, and that's different. Wait a minute. Wait. What do you mean that was R.A. Dickey and that was different? Why he won the Cy Young Award, and if you'd projected him to be below average the next year,

you would have been correct. Yes. So why not? Well, we were very skeptical of Dickey. Maybe not skeptical enough, but we took lots of guys who were worse than Dickey ahead of Dickey going forward because he was old and he's a knuckleballer, and we just hadn't really seen anyone do what he had done with a knuckleball before, managing to vary speeds the way he had and strike guys out and have

great control. And that just seemed like something that could stop happening at any time. I guess you could say the same about Kluber and the pitches that he's developed and refined, but just knuckleball makes everything weirder and somehow seems less sustainable at that elite level. So I have a hard time imagining coming up with a typical pitcher, even Dickie. If Dickie had done what Kluber had just done, we would not project him to be a below-average starter, as you're saying. So yes, I think probably everyone would be below Pakoda on that projection. It's projecting him to be worse than he was in 2013. In 2013, he had a 3.85 ERA,

and scoring environment was a little bit higher then. So now it's projecting him to have a higher ERA than that in a lower scoring environment. So yes, it seems like a stretch. So let me ask you, I mentioned two examples in the piece, but very recent examples. One, couldn't you say all the exact same things about a batter who was an MVP, which Chris Davis certainly could have been the MVP in 2013? Similarly though, similar age, Similarly, though, similar age, similar poor performance two, three, and four and five years earlier, arguably a much better pedigree.

And at least he had demonstrated that probably all of us would have taken the over on Chris Davis, whatever his projection was last year, because we were all convinced he had made adjustments. There were so many pieces about the adjustments he'd made. It was easy to see. We all knew he'd made adjustments. But he hadn't. He had a career year. And then at age 28, he had not a career year.

And also, he had had, like Kluber, he had had a pretty good semi-breakout the year before. Yeah, that September of the previous year. Yeah, and Davis was a contentious projection, as I recall, last year. People used it as an example of Pakoda's blind spots. His preseason... The opposite, too. The opposite, too, by the way. Yes, right, right, right. His preseason projection was a 285 true average,

and as it turned out, he did not make it to that. He was at 271. I guess in that situation, a lot of people expected Davis to get worse, right? But everybody expects Kluber to get worse. Nobody's projecting him to win the Cy Young and have a 2.4 ERA. Right. Yeah, I guess it's analogous.

And maybe the difference is that pitchers seem like they can change more quickly in ways that last. But I don't know. Then again, he could just get hurt quickly and not be good. But that's kind of different from forecasting the performance. So, yeah, I can kind of see it. You could probably come up with a Chris Davis-like example of a pitcher. I can't off the top of my head but someone who i don't know maybe a stay bum luisa yeah i was thinking i was definitely

thinking luisa uh yeah he developed that cutter and he was great for that year whatever year that was and uh was a cy young contender. Yeah, runner-up. Led the league in strikeouts. Uh-huh. And there was an example. I mean, there was an explanation for it. He had a new pitch and maybe new mechanics and everything. I don't know.

I remember writing about it for a lineup card at some point. There was stuff you could point to and say that this was real. And he was older than Kluber was at the time. But yeah, that was a case where you could get fooled. And he was an all-star the following year, but he was terrible. 5.7 ERA. Yeah. Wow.

What was his first half, second half split that year? 2003 was the big year. And 2004, he was an all-star with a 5.7 ERA. He was first half 4.77, but he was 8-4. Second half, 7.51. Yeah, so yeah, sure. You could point to that as an example of a time when probably pakoda that was the early days of pakoda but if pakoda had been working the same way it does now it would have done the same thing as it's doing

for kluber now and probably would have beaten the crowd yeah the other example i gave in the piece was ubaldo jimenez who uh we probably remember because it just happened, was really as good as any pitcher in the American League from basically May 1st on in 2013. And he had, again, there were sort of, like you could see it not just in his numbers, it wasn't just that he had a good run, but he was throwing harder and doing things better and he looked irreparably broken in April,

and then he was still kind of, I mean, he was always mechanically Ubaldo, which is going to be an issue, but he had quieted some things down and was incredible. He struck out 11 batters per nine or 10 batters per nine or something like that and had a 2.70 RA and had just this incredible run and really had a kind of September and August that was very Kluber-esque in his final eight starts. He struck out 71 and walked 10 in 54 innings with a 1.6 ERA.

I mean, it was very much like Kluber level in a lot of ways. And we talked that offseason about how much we bought Ubaldo, and he was terrible last year. So there's that too. Yeah, there was nothing. I mean, Kluber's various defense independent stats matched his ERA pretty much perfectly. He wasn't like a low BABIP guy or anything.

So there wasn't anything about his numbers that really suggested that it wasn't sustainable as long as he keeps pitching the same way, but maybe he will stop pitching the same way. So, sure. I think that generally speaking, I would

continue, you know, I think that this is not a strong projection for Kluber. I get why it does it, and it helps the overall package of projections if you have a consistency to it and you're not letting yourself be misled. But I think that I would take the under on Kluber as well. I do think, though, that we probably overestimate how much smarter we are on examples like Kluber. overestimate how much smarter we are on examples like Kluber. I bet if we could go back over the last 15 years and find maybe the two examples of hitters

and the two examples of pitchers that we felt strongest that we were smarter than Pocota about, I would bet that Pocota does way better on those than we gave it credit for initially. And I would probably bet that we would win, like we would be better than coin flip on those projections, but not by a whole lot. Yeah, well, it's like the competition we did in the middle of last year, right? Where we tried to, after Mitchell Lichman wrote that thing about how the guys who have beaten their projections halfway through the season or something, if you look at what they do in the second half last year to see whether we could tell which guys who were vastly underperforming or vastly overperforming, which ones would actually finish that way and which would just play like their projections.

And I don't remember what we found. Did we find that we were dumb? I will look right now. I think that we beat it by a tiny bit. I think we had a little, I think we both got, maybe just you got hot at the end of the year and ended up beating it. Yes, we were losing. All right, so this one is a different kind of situation,

but this would be Ken Giles. So Ken Giles, I cannot get enough Ken Giles fun facts. So Ken Giles, I cannot get enough Ken Giles fun facts. Because Ken Giles was as good a relief season as we've ever seen. And like a year ago, he was a high A failure. So the one that we used in the annual is the guy who allowed seven runs per nine in high A allowed seven base runners per nine in the majors in back-to-back years. So that's going to make you reconsider what you think about a guy. Ken Giles' ERA projection when he was the high A loser was 4.72.

This year it's 3.15. That is a needle moved, right? Clearly a 1.6 run reconsideration is not stubbornness by any means. However, 3.15 for an ERA is also not great, and you can find, like if you want to look at the relievers around him, in ERA it's guys like, I noted Joe Thatcher and Fernando Salas, and you could find a whole bunch of kind of mediocre-ish relievers who are in that 3.1 zone. So it's not saying he's relief ace.

And yet, he could be closing. People, I think, are excited to see him close. Do you think that 3.15 is too pessimistic? By the way, the other thing about this is that, unlike Kluber, who had 230 innings or whatever to change Pocota's mind, Ken Giles threw 48 innings in the majors and something like 70 innings total. So it's actually even a much smaller history of success than Kluber would have. So do you think that's too conservative or too credulous?

3.15 seems pretty high for someone who looks as good as Giles and throws as hard as Giles and was as good as Giles. Who was a 3.15 reliever this year? Who was this year? Like who was actually performed that way? Yeah. Like a lot of people? Yeah, right. No one you would be all that interested in.

I mean, what is league average for a reliever at this point? It's got to be not much higher than that, right? Yeah. So people who are actually Giles, by the way, that was before I did it. Giles ERA is actually projected to be 3.08, which is like the same as Ryan Madsen. It's also the same as Sergio Santos, Tony Watson, Bobby Parnell, Neil Kotz, Evan Scribner, Brad Boxberger. You know, a mix of guys who had great years, guys who didn't pitch,

guys who are okay, guys who aren't great. It's sort of just where like a lot, it seems to be the area where a lot of relievers get thrown. By the way, Craig Kimbrell's projected ERA? Mm-hmm. 1.3. Okay, so it's not a matter of Pakoda just being conservative on everyone then. No.

It will go out on a limb for some guys, or maybe it's not going out on a limb for him. But yeah, that's basically the season that Giles just had, or partial season that he just had. Yeah. So, I don't know. My inclination is to go lower than that, but I don't think it's crazy. I don't know. I mean, he was... So, he was...

I'm looking at his minor league stats. I mean, he never spent a whole lot of time at any one level except for A-ball, I guess, in 2012. He was effective. He struck guys out the whole way, but also, I guess, had some home run issues here and there. I don't know. He was not dominant at every stop. But I don't know. It's not crazy.

I would take lower, but I'm not objecting to it the way that I would Kluber's. Yeah, he was a sleeper on one of Goldstein's top tens some years back. So there was always the triple-digit aspect to him. But, of course, his problem was always that he walked a ton of people and if you if you were i would i think we discussed this once but if you were going to choose the between the pitcher who had added a whole bunch of strikeouts in his breakout season and the pitcher who had cut a whole bunch of walks in his breakout season uh i think we said we would take strikeouts guy because it reflected kind of a new ability whereas the walks you just sort of feel like maybe he was just holding his life together.

Right. Yeah. I just looked at our performance on those midseason draft guys. So we drafted 20 hitters and 20 pitchers. And we picked whether they would be, what, above or below their rest of season projections. And we actually did okay i got 26 of 40 and you got 23 of 40 no that's pretty good that means anything but at least we didn't embarrass ourselves he walked 2.2 major leaguers per nine and had been walking 5.4 minor leaguers per nine

and per nine is probably misleading for him because he was allowing so many base runners that right it's probably even 6.6 percent walk rate yeah and yeah before that he was in the teens usually uh-huh so i i don't know what would you project his walk rate before i I tell you what Picotta says, just knowing that, what would you project his walk rate to be? 10%. 10%. I think I'm going to have to ask you to phrase it in the form of a per nine innings because that's not in front of me. Okay.

I don't know. Three and a half. Okay. So, yeah. So, Picotta has actually 3.9 which is not which is still I mean you'd figure a guy who strikes out 11 and walks

3.9 would be pretty good but it thinks he will be pretty good just not superhuman I'd take the under on everything I'll take the under too but again I mean you could see there's definitely potential for 5.7 ERA. Like John Axford, for instance, has a similar projection this year.

But probably we might have had this conversation about John Axford after 2011, right? Where he was so good, had been for two years, had done all the things, cut the walks, threw really hard, was dominant. How could Pocota project him to do whatever Pocota projected him to do? And since then, his ERAs have been 467,

402, and 395. I mean, he's just not very good, and it happened immediately. The other guy, Jim Henderson, you could say the same thing, right? Jim Henderson came out and was not Giles good, but really incredible. His ERA tripled this year. Not many innings, but he didn't get many innings because his ERA tripled.

Right. There's Steve Delabarre. There's Marquardt. I mean, again, Giles is better than everybody, but there's a lot of these guys who you drafted because you needed a closer, and then he had an ERA of seven. So there is definitely seven potential in Ken Giles that we're probably not as paranoid about as Percode is. So that seems fair enough, but I'll take the under.

All right, I closed the tab. That's it then. I have another one. Let's see. Dillon Batonsis, I'm going to see what it is, but what would you, give me what you would, before I tell you, before I even look, what would you give me for Batonsis, projected ERA and projected Ks for 9?

What would I project him to be, or what would I expect Pakoda would? What would you? I don't care what you think Pakoda would do. I want to know what you would do. Okay. All right. I'll say 2.7 with a, gosh, what was he? 13.5 last year. Huh. I don't know. I would guess that he'll pitch fewer innings this year, and potentially that will make him even better rested and throw even harder. Who knows? Or maybe not because all pitchers lose velocity over time. I'll say 13.

13. Okay. I was going to say 255 for an ERA and 11.7 for strikeouts per night. So Pocota will probably be higher than that. Pocota is 3.94 ERA. Let's just nip this one. We're taking the under. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's... Because he was really horrible, too. This is an example of a guy who had not just bad stats, but horrifying stats, right? He was a starter, and he was very, very bad as a starter, like with a 6.5 VRA in 2012, and walking tons of guys, and not striking out as many guys as you would think. So, yeah, this is a clear case of starter-to-reliever transition

working really well, and I don't know whether Pocota adjusts for that well or not. Well, okay. So then let's, uh, let's talk about Zach Britton because Zach Britton is a starter who converted to a reliever and,

um, had a great, uh, season, but also strangely low strikeouts. Uh, so give me your projection for Zach Britton and then I'll tell you what he got.

So last year he had a 1.65 ERA but a 3.13 FIP almost 7 strikeouts per 9 about 3 walks per 9 yeah, lots of ground balls yeah, I don't know I'll say 3-ish 3

with 8 strikeouts per nine. So I know this one, so I'm not even going to guess. Pakoda has them at 3.52 ERA and seven strikeouts per nine. Do you feel strongly enough to take the under on that one? It'd be nice to have just one where we could take the over, but if there isn't going to be one, there isn't going to be one. Yeah, I don't know it's like those jim bowden contract predictions we just kept taking the over

this time we're just taking the under i think yeah i'd probably be more comfortable taking the under than the over uh-huh all right jake arietta give me an ERA. I like Jake Arrieta. You think he has good stuff. I did say that. I'll say 3.05. You're taking the under. It's 3.66, which... It's what it was in 2013.

I'm surprised it's not higher. That's what his projection was in 2013? No, that's what his actual was. Only after the trade. Yeah, you're right. He was very, very poor before the trade. I actually don't feel bad taking the over here. I'm going to take the over.

I'll put my money on over here. Okay. I liked Jake Arrieta a lot last year. He was really great. But his record of failure is much closer to the present day than Kluber's was. And his success is a lot fewer innings than Kluber's was, too, this year. And really, even in Chicago, when he came over from Chicago, he had one of those Jacob Turner, or when he came over from Baltimore in 2013, he had one of those Jacob Turner years where his ERA was pretty good

for a short period of time, but his peripherals were absolutely garbage. So we're really talking about something more comparable to the Ubaldo Jimenez five-month thing in my mind. So I'll go ahead and take the over on Arrieta and I'll feel good about it. What about Chris Bozio as the latest pitching coach guru? I think that I don't believe in pitching groups as a general. Yeah, okay. I think they're all good.

I think all pitching coaches are good. And that he had good pitching coaches before and that he'll have good pitching coaches after. But I don't really buy the miracle worker thing. No, neither do I. All right, and Jacob deGrom? Yeah, that's a tough one. No, neither do I Alright, and Jacob deGrom Hmm Huh Yeah, that's a tough one

Because that's one where the The low expectations are very, very recent Just last season And he was He was like a I mean, in AAA and AA He was just, I mean Nothing special, not striking out lots of guys.

He didn't really strike out. I mean, he struck out a fair number of guys in the majors, but even last year before he was promoted, he wasn't striking out lots of guys. And 2013, he was just kind of four point closer to 5 ERA with not very impressive peripherals. So I would be comfortable going higher on him than I have for anyone so far, I think. You don't even know what it is. Oh, you're not saying you're taking the over. You're just saying you're going to give a higher ERA. Okay.

Probably. Yeah. So I'll say 3.5. My favorite thing about guys like DeGrom is that when I, I control F for their name in the spreadsheet, it first takes me to all the people that they're comparables that he's a comparable for. And in order to have jacob de grom be a comp for you you're probably young and terrible and so you just see this like list of just awful pitchers who he's comped to then you see his own comp and it's probably much better uh because he's at a better place now although his comps are david phelps joe saunders and josh cole mentor uh which probably fits saunders and Josh Kuhlmenter, which probably fits.

Saunders has had a heck of a season once. Anyway, what did you say? What was your number? I said 3.5. It's 3-5-3. All right. I'll take the over. Just so we can do it once, I'll take it.

All right. And then the last one I'll ask you for is Yuzumaro Petit. And I'm going to tell you what the breakdown is of starts to relief appearances that we project so that you can incorporate that. True Swingman, 32 relief appearances, 13 starts. 3.4? That's 3.36. So I took two overs. Nicely done.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Yeah, if you want, now that you've got an over on Petit, you could give back. I'll stick with it. I was barely off. I'm going to take the under on Petit. Okay. All right.

I already knew the answer to DeGrom. Well, I know the answer. I don't want to give one. That's what I came to say. All right. I already knew the answer to DeGrom. Well, I know the answer. I don't want to give one. That's what I came to say. All right. So let's wrap it up. I want to know, based on the conversation that we had and the players that I've given you, if you were just opening up your Pocota and you came across these, would you think, this thing's nuts, it has nothing to offer me?

Or would it make you sort of change your mind on any of these guys or some answer in between? I think it's valuable to be mindful about how recently some guys got good. And how, I mean, it's probably useful to do this sort of exercise every year because at the end of the season we can look back or the official stat keeper of Effectively Wild, John Chenier, can look back and see whether we knew what we were talking about or whether Pakoda knew what it was talking about. And then when next year's projections come out and there is some new crazy Kluber projection, then we will be able to refer to this year. So, so I think it's always valuable to remember that guys aren't necessarily what they were when we last saw them, which is why we use projection systems, because if they all were what we just saw, then we could all predict what they were going to do. Yeah. The problem, the problem with the conversation that we're having right now is that once you start saying,

well, any projection that doesn't seem right to me, I will just set aside as the exception where I'm smarter than Pagoda, is then you don't get that benefit. If you're just going to dismiss the ones you don't agree with because you think that there's some flaw in the logic, then you're just getting an echo of what you think already. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's tricky.

I mean, it makes sense to be mindful of the blind spots or the things that it doesn't take into account, whether it's changes in velocity or changes in pitch selection or whatever. Although even there, there are probably cases where you can read too much into that. And maybe a guy who suddenly gained velocity will suddenly lose velocity. Or maybe if he couldn't throw a cutter before, he won't be able to throw a cutter next year. So I don't know how much having an explanation like that actually makes you more accurate or more able to beat a projection system. So it might be that just having an easy explanation at hand like that makes you more prone to making mistakes. I don't know.

Yeah, I mentioned all the examples of the guys who were really good and then regressed, even though you might not have seen it coming. So in the interest of fairness, I will note that last year, Scott Casimir might have been an example of a guy who you would have said Pocota was way too bullish on, bullish bearish on, because its memory was kind of selective and wrong. And so this was the comment that we had for Scott Casimir in the annual. Casimir utilized an unconventional off-season training regimen to restore at least two of the miles per hour he'd lost from his once nuclear heater. More importantly, he found confidence in his new delivery,

exhibited control and command beyond anyone's wildest hopes for his old delivery. He looks completely healthy now, and despite his rather pedestrian 4.04 ERA last year, almost every indicator suggests he's likely to be among the top pitchers in baseball, if he can stay that way. Obviously, whenever a reclamation project works out well, there's a desire to understand what was different about this time. We've been burned before, after all. Beyond the obvious medical repairs leading to restored confidence, which can take years,

it takes a combination of good direction and intensely hard work by the athlete. If Kazimir indeed returns to his former glory, much credit will be given to the off-season training program and to the Indians' coaches. Pakoda, which ignores off-season training, confidence, new mechanics, medical repairs, good direction, intensely hard work, Indians' coaches, and dedication, says nope. And so that was kind of our way of acknowledging that Pakoda

isn't able to write a 200-word player comment like we're able to write, and there's value to both. Okay. Is that it? That's it. All right. So please send us some emails. If you think our projections are right on target or crazy, you can let us know, or let us know about anything else at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. You can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. You can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

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