Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 652: Revenue, Run Differential, and Ways to Win Now

Episode Date: April 8, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Doug Melvin’s extension talks and then answer listener emails about run differential, the players’ portion of revenue, Kris Bryant, and more.

Well, I don't know, but I'm curious all the same. I've been thinking for some time now. Tell me why you came. Tell me why you came Good morning and welcome to episode 652 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus Hello

Hey Ben, How are you? Okay. We got a tweet today from someone who said that after 100 episodes, he's finally learned to keep us straight, learned to identify which of us is which. We get tweets like this periodically. I'm always amazed that we are not easily distinguishable. I remember once overhearing a conversation of people who collectively could not tell Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio apart in The Departed. Well, that, I mean, you've got some face blindness, right? I do. I have bad face blindness. And that's why I feel okay mocking them. Yeah.

face blindness and that's why it's that's why i feel okay mocking them yeah because uh i had no no trouble with i guess i guess there is voice blindness as well i guess i the thing about it though is that like we sound just based on the recording production we sound like we're in two different podcasts and somebody spliced them together awkwardly. You're recording. You're speaking directly into the microphone. And not only that, but a nice microphone. And I'm speaking basically into a computer microphone that is then being transported over Skype. And they just don't sound alike. Even if we sounded alike,

and by the way, even if we brought remotely the same level of energy, you would think the production would be a dead giveaway. One of us is essentially recording. One of us is like an, like an HBO prestige drama. And the other one of us is, is like a Preston Sturgis film. One of us is Robert Durst in the bathroom with the mic on.

The other one is Andrew Jarecki. Yeah. I don't know. It's I, I've had that experience in as a podcast listener like NPR's Invisibilia podcast. Have you listened to that? I have, and I didn't have a – while I have face blindness, I have extreme vocal perception, like extreme. Well, the hosts of that really have similar voices.

They joke about how similar they sound. Yeah. So that one's understandable but i mean i don't know well like i said i'm ben he's sam my wife can't tell mike pesca and stephan fatsis apart really yeah wow well okay so speaking of extensions which we did on yesterday's episode, did you read about Doug Melvin's extension? No. Doug Melvin gets to determine his own extension, essentially. He is going into the last year of his contract.

He's had like three previous extensions, three previous three-year extensions or four-year extensions on his contract as Brewers GM. And he gets the call. The headline of this story at the Journal Sentinel is, Doug Melvin gets call on length of extension. And there are quotes from Mark Adonacio about how he's just sort of waiting around for Doug Melvin to tell him how long he wants his contract to be. So if you were a GM and you could, you know, you could choose your own extension length, how long would you choose your extension to be? And Doug Melvin is 62 and he's

been doing this forever and maybe at some point he'll get burned out, but, but forget about retirement. What if you are in the prime of your working life and you get to determine how long you want an extension for how long would you take and the presumption is that if i if i sign an extension for for three years that i can't leave for three years that i can't go to a different team that's what's yeah i guess that's what's stopping me from saying right i guess there's always there's the possibility of uh of getting a president job or something with another team. But let's say that you can't be a GM for another team. And I guess just you can't renegotiate your contract or you can't have the opportunity to have someone bid up your salary.

But yeah, you never know how long you want to lock yourself in for because ownership changes and a team's competitive state changes. And yet you also like job security and it would be nice not to worry about getting fired or at least getting fired and not being paid. So those things kind of conflict. Yeah, I do like job security i was tempted to to say you know forever and uh and every every point you make uh makes me see how foolish i am uh and short-sighted i am so um i guess i guess i don't know i guess i would want and i've been at the club for a long time i'm like melvin i've been there there's no like sense that i need to have five years to have my plan work or anything like that i mean presumably i'm already in the fifth year some plan yeah i guess so i guess like four i guess if it's good enough for barack Obama, I'd consider it good enough for me.

Well, Barack Obama probably would have preferred eight if he had been allowed to choose. And yeah, you're right. You're right. I am. Although, who knows? Maybe he wouldn't have wanted to commit to the second term before he had the first term. I mean, he'd be an instant lame duck. Yeah, that's true.

If he had chosen an eight I don't know Tell me how your brain is working on this Tell me why you think that's an interesting question I don't know four cents Do you have an answer? Four cents about right That's what Melvin keeps doing apparently

I guess that's what works for him I guess I would I'd probably I might go longer than four just to make sure that I don't, you know, if I have a couple bad years. Because as you've mentioned, extensions for managers and GMs are very, you know, you can discard them. It's not like they're making that much money compared to how much you're spending on payroll. So having a couple years of contract ahead of you doesn't necessarily mean that someone won't fire you, but having five years of contract ahead of you might mean that. Yeah, I don't know, seven. Okay. All right. Seven sounds good. Okay. So it's a listener email show.

Yeah. First, real quick, it's not nearly a full slate of games yet. We're only halfway through the day. However, first three games today, three hours 14, two hours 48, three hours 22. 22 all right has that completely ruined your your confidence that that might mean something the first day's game lengths having two games over over last year's average just pointing it out yeah okay all right so let's take a question from isaac in montreal i'm watching tanaka get lit up and now the yankees have brought in a reliever in the fifth who is no good. In games like these that turn into blowouts, teams will often throw out guys who aren't great anyways. This makes me wonder about how arbitrary nine innings per game is. What if, instead of having the standings be wins and losses, the standings were a reflection of run differential? By doing this, each pitch would matter equally,

a 9-0 win would be more valued than a 1-0 win, and games would never truly be over since each at-bat would count for something. Run differential is obviously something we look at already when we're trying to figure out a team's true talent or get closer to a team's true talent. And sometimes we will just throw out blowouts or we'll say that a certain team had a bunch of blowouts and it skewed their run differential to some extent. So Isaac is just saying, why don't we cut out that stage of analysis and that adjustment and just have run differential be the thing that everyone is trying to improve? Yeah, well, right. just have run differential be the thing that everyone is trying to improve yeah well right it would make uh in the game there would be in a way no place uh in the world for mop-up men any longer uh because every inning no matter what would be just as valuable as the others there

would be there would essentially be no such thing as leverage um and i said there would be no place for mop-up men and yet obviously as is apparent you would have all the mop-up men you would still have all those guys are mop-up men uh not because they're i mean they're they're still necessary uh they're still considered the you know 740th best player in the world. And so you would have no leverage whatsoever. You would probably start every game maybe with your closer, but you would certainly use your closer basically whenever you could without any regard for whether the score was close.

You would just start with your best players and use them until they were too tired. There'd be no strategy to it at all. You just start at the top of your spreadsheet and then go on down. But what would be interesting, I'm trying to find it, Ben, and I can't find it. I don't think we've ever talked about it, but it's always been one of my very favorite facts about early baseball. think we've ever talked about it but it's always been one of my very favorite facts about early baseball until some point uh there was no um there was no rule that you didn't play the bottom of the ninth when the home team was winning and so if you were winning in the ninth and you were the

home team you'd come out you'd play is Is it this? I'm trying to find it. I know about this from Peter Morris' A Game of Inches. Do you know what year that started? Or stopped? I guess that's what you're trying to find. That's what I'm trying to find. I'm trying to find the write-up.

Did you know also, well, I found this while looking for it. It was not until 1950 that the home team was required by rule to bat last. By then, what had once been viewed as a significant strategic decision had become so routine that hardly anyone noticed. And it became, based on my skimming, it became simply the default choice. Yeah. Not a rule until 1950. I wonder when the last time a home team didn't bet second was. Yeah, somebody should find that. Somebody should. I wonder if that's play indexable. I wonder if that's play indexable. I wonder if that's play indexable.

Yeah. I think it is. We do have a play index segment coming up. We do. Anyway, I've now given up looking so I can look for this. I'm curious what the stats were like in those meaningless bottom of the ninths, bottoms of the ninth? Would guys try as hard because their numbers were still at stake,

or would they have significantly different offensive statistics or pitching statistics, or would umpires just call strikes every time? Or maybe that was before umpires called strikes, or I don't know. Well, now you've said this, nowires called strikes or I don't know what. Well, now I've, now you've said this. Now I've switched.

I've switched back. All right. Well, so the, the run differential thing, while you look, I guess you would have to choose between, it would appeal to, to people who want the playoffs to be,

or who want the season to be a more accurate reflection of the team's true talent. Although at this point, with so many playoff rounds and so much randomness injected into the process there, I don't know how much anyone even really cares about the best regular season teams qualifying for the playoffs anymore. But you'd also have to choose between.

It would be a tradeoff because every moment in every game would have some level of importance, but no moment in any game would have a really extreme level of importance. a really extreme level of importance. So you'd have to choose between whether you want that or whether you prefer the peaks and valleys of the current system where you get sleepy blowouts, where announcers have to try to find something to talk about, and you have to try to find something to write about when you cover it for the worst game of the season article

at the end of the year. And then there are the moments of high drama interspersed with the boredom. Not sure which I would prefer. I think I'd probably prefer the peaks and valleys because change is more entertaining than not change. There's an entire section in this book on the history of quote, when all else fails slash grooving as a category of baseball action. quote, when all else fails slash grooving as a category of baseball action. This book is so phenomenally specific. It's a great book.

I can't find it. I'm going back to the play index. Okay. It's too hard to tell. Rain delays make it impossible. I need exactly one more filter than they have. All right. Okay.

Brett wants to know, if you owned a very good team and felt compelled to go all in this season, but had already signed every free agent who was willing to join your team and had picked up every overpriced player that other teams were willing to trade, what would be the best way to pick up some extra wins?

Well, you could, I mean, one thing you could do is you could trade, no, could you? You could trade your overpriced player to another team for their better player and then pick up both contracts. You could eat all of the overpriced player's making $10 million and a two-win player that's making $30 million, then you take the three-win player, give them the two-win player, but eat all $30 million of his contract. So then you go from two to three, and then they go from $10 million for three wins to $0 for two wins.

And so they would also be happy. That's not the spirit of the question. Yeah. But it's true. It is. So you could, I guess this is also not the spirit of the question. You would not just want to trade all your prospects for good players in the short term. So that would make you not a very good team pretty soon yeah so okay so we're just we're just bad at this question so let's how

would we really answer this um boy i mean there's nothing you can do to improve your your i mean all the all the improvements you can make are are off the field i guess right there's nothing you can do if you can't sign anyone good and you can't trade for anyone good those are the ways to get players unless well is there any strategy that is so short term that no team would do it uh, but might have a short-term benefit. Like, abusing your pitchers, having your relievers throw 95 outings. Right, yeah.

Which is acceptable and might work. Yeah, like that's the Billy Martin reputation, at least, that he worked his pitchers really hard wherever he went, and it paid off in the short term and then everyone tanked but by then he'd been fired and hired somewhere else so yeah you could you could do that i guess is there is there any equivalent for position players probably not uh i guess i mean well it depends you could just give no one days off but you don't know whether that actually make you better.

It might be that you would be better giving guys days off. I mean, I presume that. There's no long-term damage to giving guys days off. So, presumably, yeah, teams do it right now because it's good for them in the short term. Right. It's humane. So, I would guess that that's not one. And so, is there anything you could spend money on that would be i mean you could bribe the umpire there's no there's really no way you could spend money like you couldn't spend money on like nicer

bats that wouldn't really be a thing like no you could if you could like oh uh you know uh I'd do it if you could. Like, oh, you know, better batting gloves. I'm sure teams have... The batting glove budget is unlimited this year, fellas. Teams have probably thought of that already. So, yeah, I don't think equipment would be the way to go. You could... I mean, Brett mentions that you could just hire other front offices.

You could hire the best coaches and hire the best analysts or something. Try to steal all your rivals' best quantitative people or scouts or whatever. You could. I doubt if you hired a front office in March, it would do you much good. And I doubt if you hired even there. If you could just poach every team's scouting staff right before the draft, that would probably be good.

Not for this year. Well, yeah, that's true. You're going all in. Right before the trade deadline? I don't know. You'd have the... If you could hire a scout from every organization or someone from every organization who could bring along knowledge of that organization's rankings of prospects, you know, every organization. Prospects don't matter, though.

Yeah, prospects don't matter. Well, you could use their perceptions of your prospects to make more advantageous deals in the short term. You don't care. You don't care about your prospects. You could trade your prospects to a team that values them more. Well, first of all, we've already taken that off the table. Right. But second of all, it doesn't really matter. You're going to trade your prospects away,, it doesn't really matter. You're going to trade your prospects away, but you don't really care about getting value from your prospects because your prospects are nothing to you.

Now, might it be conceivable that you might squeeze an extra few dollars of prospect value out of your prospects? Maybe, but not really. I mean, you're going to trade your prospects for the best players you can get in your scenario that we've already ruled to be against the rules anyway. You could have four advanced scouts at every game. Right.

You could... Maybe it might be worthwhile to... I don't know. I guess you could... I mean, you could bribe a team's bench coach for their signs or something. I mean, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't help to like sign a team. You could have someone steal signs, right? You could have like an advanced scout whose only job was to steal signs.

Well, you could, yeah, you could do that right now if you wanted the teams don't not do that because they're not all in it has nothing to do with being all in uh they don't do that for other reasons uh so probably not that helpful uh you could i don't know yeah there's not much that you can do unless you're willing to break laws. Yeah, like there are things you can do if you were willing to break laws. Yeah. You could hire lawyers. You could just hire a lot of lawyers.

Could you pay another guy, another team's players to retire? Yeah, or you could bribe someone to return a positive test on a PED test or something. That's against the law. I'm saying could you technically, if you didn't want Kershaw to pitch for the Dodgers, could you just go to him and on the side say, I'll give you a personal services contract of $400 million to retire? You could. No, you say you could. How do you know? You mean, would it be against the law? That's what I mean. All right. That would probably be tampering.

We don't have a good one. This has gone on long enough. Yeah, that's tough. Okay. All right. This one is from Tom. He says, A lot has been made of the declining share of revenue taken home by players. I have a theory that I've not seen discussed much and was wondering if that lack of discussion is because I am missing something obvious. In recent years, the aging curve for players has shifted forward,

with players peaking earlier. The most valuable assets are the ones with the least bargaining power and the players who do have more bargaining power are less valuable than they were 10 years ago. Could this explain why salary inflation has not kept up with increased baseball revenues? Is there anything the players could do realistically? Is there something I am totally missing? players could do realistically is there something i am totally missing wait we just a couple weeks ago we had tim britain on here talking about how the gap between something about prospects like the gap between the minors and the majors being so big now and that for that reason young players were doing poorly right weren't didn't weren't we just talking about how young players are worse than they've ever been uh that that came up briefly um yeah which well i mean young players is maybe not quite the same as

as players who were rookies or guys who just came up from the minors i don't i don't know as you know i wrote about that a little while ago at Grantland, and it does seem like the gap is at its largest. The gap between AAA and MLB is as large as it's been over the last three decades or so, but not larger than it's ever been, not dramatically larger than it has been recently, so it doesn't seem like there's been some sort of sea change there. But anyway, but it does. Yeah, unnecessary topic. It is true, though, that the aging curve seems to have shifted back

toward the historical norm and that players under 30 are now accounting for a larger percentage of the total league-wide production than they were a decade ago. This is a really good question then. It is a good question. Very interesting question. You should have written about this. Well, I didn't think of it.

Took time to suggest it. So it seems like there's something to that, right? That if more production is concentrated in younger players and younger players don't have much bargaining power and they are governed by the the cba and the arbitration process or the pre-arbitration process then then yeah right like once you once you get to the age where you are a free agent you are no longer as attractive and teams don't want you as much and they don't want to pay you as much. Although I guess theoretically there's also a shortage of players or shortage of free agents because of all the extensions and maybe that drives up the price somewhat also. So it

makes sense to me. I don't think it explains the full change in percentage of revenue but it might be a contributing factor yeah i i don't think that i don't think it matters i think that uh that owners spend as much money as they feel comfortable spending on players and so like changes over time yeah but like i think that if if they had 150 million dollars to spend and um a good player was available for less than expected and so they were going to be able to get away with 147 million dollars i think they would spend that three million anyway i think they'd find $3 million to spend somewhere else. Yeah. Well, a lot of it, of course, is the TV contracts

and teams getting tons of money for TV. And you would think that some of that should trickle down to the players eventually, and maybe it will, but it hasn't really had to yet. It's not like the broadcast companies negotiate contracts with the owners where they demand that the players be given a certain portion of the revenue so they're talking to the league and they're talking to the owners and they're giving them lots of money and the owners aren't just going to willingly turn around and gift some percentage of that to the players. So I don't know how you encourage owners to share the wealth if you are the players association,

other than using the threat of a strike in the next negotiations. So let's just assume that I'm right and that the amount of money that goes to the players in total is the same. But because of this that Tom has pointed out, it is being distributed less equitably than ever before. That a large percentage of young good players are being paid even more or than they're worth while the money is going to older players who are even less deserving of it than ever before. Now, if you're the players association, do you care? Does this matter to you or is total

revenue going to your population of workers, all that really matters. It's particularly because it's going to older players and younger players someday become older. Right. Would it bother you at all? Maybe not. I guess I'm saying is it in the union's, in the players' association's interests to have pay be distributed more equitably

i don't know i think it is and i think it partly is because uh well i mean certainly they represent the interests i mean the union is not a thing uh with its own brain the union represents the people that it represents. To me, it seems like they are the ones most in need of that payday. Like we've sort of talked about in other contexts, it's great. It's super great for some 31-year-old to get, for Nelson Cruz to get $56 million or whatever, like that's good for him, but it would be really lousy if, um,

you know, like, uh, Anthony Rendon or something and had his life severely affected by the lack of his big payday. And, um, so ultimately if the job is to maximize the amount the players make,

but also to maximize the benefit to their lives and improve the quality of their lives, then you would think that they would want to push the payments even earlier if possible, right? You would think that they would want to make sure that every player who makes the majors and establishes himself or just is a working major leaguer would have some security and comfort for the rest of their lives. And that would mean pushing the revenue forward to the younger players. Obviously

not too young, because if you're too young, you're the minors and you don't count. Or you're an amateur and you don't exist. But if you're a second year player, it seems kind of important. So what does the union... I wonder what the union doesn't get if it were rearranged. I guess you could say that maybe union reps are more likely to be veterans, and so maybe they're more likely to represent the interests of veterans. But I wonder what you lose. I wonder what you lose. Maybe it actually works the other way.

Maybe the other way to Tom's theory. Maybe they know that veterans will always be overpaid. Just they always will be forever and ever. And so you want to make sure that GMs have as much ability to overpay veterans as possible. Because that's where all the dumb money goes in. You basically want to have the one guy at the table who's sort of drunk and doesn't really care that he only has a low pair and is just going to throw his money in.

And that is owners around veterans. So maybe they want to free up that money, the drunk low pair money. Probably not. I don't think that's it. I'm going to back off of that. And I'm going to say that it would be better for the union if they figured out a way to get more money in young players' hands

and less money in old players' hands. All right. Good question, Tom. Play index? Sure. So did you... You didn't. Did you see what Jared Saltola-Marcia did yesterday? I didn't. No, you didn't. Did you see what Jared Saltola-Marquia did yesterday?

I didn't. No, you didn't. It wasn't notable. But it was notable in a way. So in his first plate appearance, he came up leading off the third inning, trailing by one, and he struck out. the third inning, trailing by one. And he struck out. In his second plate appearance,

he came up in the fifth inning in a tie game with a runner on first and nobody out. And he struck out. And then he came up in the seventh inning trailing by one with nobody out and the bases loaded. And he hit a 5-2-3 double play.

This feels like a negative WPA play index. It is. The third at bat was negative 31% win expectancy. That was my favorite. This is one of my favorite things about baseball. The team that's trailing on the scoreboard but winning by win probability.

That's my new thing this year, noticing those. So anyway, 31% for that, 4% for the second one, 3% for the – so that's negative 38% win probability, which, and this is where it gets interesting, is the 16th worst opening day in history. Wow. Historic. So I wanted to see,

and you'll know the answer even before I get going, but I wanted to see if this means he's going to have a terrible year because he started so badly. Do you want to guess? year because uh he started so badly do you want to guess uh i would guess that that on the whole the group of players who have terrible wpas in a single game are worse than the average player but are they worse than you know say the year before no no they're they're not even really worse than the average player maybe a little bit but there are a couple who like that was their last year

they basically got run out of the league there were some who were you know historically bad and then there were some who were all stars and had career years as you would expect so they had as a group they produced 28 wins above replacement that year the previous seasons the same group had produced

29 wins above replacement that year. The previous seasons, the same group had produced 29 wins above replacement. It is not interesting. But here's the thing. Did you see what Jared Saltzman-Machia did today? No, I didn't. You were falling behind on salty news. I know. This is why it's so tough to keep up with all the important stuff that happens in the season.

I don't have the win probability added for you. but he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts. So he's going to be negative. You can't be positive with that. He's going to be negative. So that's two days in a row to start the season. And while it doesn't matter if you have a terrible first game, and it doesn't really matter if you have a terrible first two games at some point it probably does matter and so i look to see who had the longest streak of negative win probability added games to start a season um and uh it's it's a guy named mike rivera mike renee rivera middle name renee padres catcher but not that re Rene Rivera, who in 2003 started with 15 consecutive negative win probability added games. Negative.021 win probability in the second game. So Rene Rivera started with 15 negative win probability added games,

and then in the 16th game, he snapped his streak by appearing as defensive replacement in the ninth inning of a game that his team lost by nine. He managed to have a win probability add in that game of zero, of course. And then the next three games, negative, negative, negative,

I cannot play again. His season was 19 games. Began with a streak of 15, but 19 games. 18 of them, he hurt his team's chances of winning. And in the last one, he did nothing. So Salto La Macchia does want to avoid that. Mike Rivera might, you might argue mike rivera had the season in history i wonder what the highest number of games played without a positive win probability in a season is

oh that's a the highest number of games played yeah most games played without a single win probably a positive win probably added game all right i. I can do that. Okay. Let's see here. Most games played... Actually, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can do that. Okay. What I can do is tell you that Mike Rivera was even worse by perhaps this measure than Eugenio Velez was the year he went hitless.

The year he went 0 for 37 and never got a hit. Because at least Eugenio had a sacrifice fly and a walk. And so he did have a couple of positive win probability events. And so he's better. Unfortunately, he's better than Mike Rivera, who went an entire year without contributing to his teams. So we got a salty watch. He's at Game 2. We're going see if if he can make it 15 years

by the way he also allowed a stolen base in each game and did not catch either if you could count framing probably be even more negative i yeah i knew you'd mention that all right uh so play index coupon code bp get the discounted price of $30 On a one year subscription Alright, wrapping up with one more From Lee The Chris Bryant in motion has been covered To high heaven, but I was talking with a buddy The other day, and he posited the following

Wouldn't it improve the Cubs chances Of locking Bryant up long term If they had shown goodwill and promoted him For opening day? If he's anywhere near As good as advertised, there's no way he makes it to arbitration, right? Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious, but it seems as though this may possibly come back to bite the club when they start discussing the inevitable Longoria

slash Trout-esque pre-arb contract extension. And I guess the obvious thing that he's probably overlooking is Chris Bryant's agent, Scott Boris, who is not likely to sign a Longoria Trout-esque extension. No, he's not likely to sign a Longoria-esque extension, but he's not necessarily unlikely to sign an extension. I mean, like we talked about, these things, extensions these days, like the Trout one, for instance, which wasn't for enough money. But they only buy out like one year these days. And Boris works for his clients.

I mean, a lot of players, a lot of Boris's players have signed extensions. And I remember with Jared Weaver, he constantly heard about how he would never sign an extension because of Boris. And then he not only signed an extension, despite Boris, but took what was seen as a huge hometown discount to do it. And he was pretty clear that in his mind he thought he was taking a hometown discount because he wanted to pitch in front of his parents for the rest of possibility that a Boris client who desired some financial stability would sign one of these five-year, $50 million extensions that we're seeing. That's not a huge loss. He'll still hit free agency in plenty of time to really cash in.

he'll still hit free agency in plenty of time to really cash in. If you thought it hurt the chances of that, I don't think it hurts the chances of that either. I think that's the bigger thing is that just before Weaver signed his deal, the Angels took him to arbitration over some incredibly petty amount. We all also wrote then that he would never sign an extension. He signed an extension like a year later. My guess is that the goodwill factor doesn't really matter all that much here. If it does, if it hurts them a little, they would gain by having his earnings expectations be docked by service time considerations.

The fact is that sure, maybe they have to overpay him by $5 million now because he's a little bit mad at them, but maybe they just saved themselves $15 million in what he'll be expected to earn. I don't think that I quite buy that they shouldn't do this on pragmatic grounds. I, you know, think that they shouldn't do it because it sucks for me, and I don't want to watch them do it. But I kind of think that maybe that's

overthought. Yeah, I don't buy into the goodwill argument all that much. It comes up all the time. It came up with the Harper Nationals grievance. It came up with Trout, right, whether grievance it came up with trout right whether whether they were going to give him more than the league minimum they didn't give him a $75,000 raise right he was never gonna yeah and it was like people were aghast at that yeah that

was a huge thing for a couple of days it was yeah well everything is a huge thing in the for a couple of days but but yeah i don't buy that so much. I did an article a few years ago on arbitration at BP in July. I wrote about arbitration in July, so no one read it, rightfully so. But I looked for guys who did go to arbitration and then looked for comps who did not go to arbitration and then looked to see whether there was any difference in the rate at which they stayed with that team past their first, I don't know, three and six years of service time or something.

And there was a difference. There was a difference for hitters. It showed up as guys who didn't go to arbitration were more likely to stay with their team. But there was no difference for pitchers, so I don't know whether there's any difference between pitchers and hitters in that respect, or whether that just shows that there probably isn't anything real to that effect. But in general, players might have long memories about these things.

I mean, Boris was particularly vocal about the Bryant situation. Even Bryant was somewhat vocal about it, and maybe that wasn't entirely posturing. But by the time you come up to the team and you have lots of success with the team and you like your teammates and you like your manager and maybe you go to the playoffs a couple times or win a World Series or something,

and at that point maybe the front office isn't even the same you're not gonna hold hold it against the team that you know seven years ago they they didn't bring you up or four years ago or whatever it is so seems like you would have to be a particularly good grudge holder to really hold that against the team or for that to make a material difference all right we got some other good questions but i will star them for next week and maybe come back to some of them hey john marosi reported that the orioles are having ongoing trade discussions involving uh brian webb who was recently dfa'd if you had a if you had to recommend if you were

brian webb and you told your agent not that he has veto power over trades but if you had to recommend, if you were Ryan Webb and you told your agent, not that he has veto power over trades, but if you had to pick a situation that was most likely to result in a save, is there any team that you would choose if you were Ryan Webb? I'm looking at closer depth charts, closers and set up men to see if there's a particularly vulnerable bullpen where Webb would have a better chance. It's the Braves. Jason Grilly with Jim Johnson up next. Bad team. That's probably the best.

If Grilly's any good, he'll probably get traded anywhere. Alright, so root for Ryan Webb to go to the Braves. If you want to see this root broken. Tigers, maybe? Nah, probably not Tigers I don't like the Tigers anymore, I take it back I think you probably got it Mets, Juris Familia is hurt now

They're relying on, I guess, Bobby Parnell Who's also coming off an injury Maybe that's something that would work but Yeah all right Okay so that's it for today Please join The Facebook group at facebook.com Slash groups slash effectively wild rate

And review the podcast on iTunes Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes And send us emails for next week At podcast at baseball Prospectus.com And then in the 16th game he And send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And then in the 16th game, he appeared. Oh, my goodness.

Edit that out. I just could not believe it.