Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 696: Listener Emails: The Hacking, Hanley, and Position Player Pitching Edition

Episode Date: June 18, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about position players pitching and answer emails about the Cardinals-Astros hacking scandal, Hanley Ramirez, defensive positioning, and more.

I see the self-approval page alright You know you're right, no need to worry why Bound in storms, you made a turn In the wake of your own crushing dances And truth covers lies Good morning and welcome to episode 696 of Effectively Wild, the pretty darn daily podcast for baseball perspectives Good morning and welcome to episode 696 of Effectively Wild, the Pretty Darn Daily Podcast for Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hello. Joined as pretty darn always by Sam Miller. Uh-huh. Stompers update. Stompers are 11 and 1 and that is your stompers update yeah so this has been a pretty big week for position players pitching maybe the

biggest week for position players pitching i can check that in a quick little impromptu play index i did just do one play index because one of the position player pitching appearances this week was jeff rancor who pitched 48 pitches which seems like a ton for a position player casper wells the answer is casper wells and think he topped it or you think he played for 48 teams no he topped it well i just searched for baseball reference play Playindex has a, in the game finder, you can check is typically a position player. And you get a list of the games by guys, pitchers who are typically position players. Unfortunately, Rick Ankeel is typically a position player in the database. So you have to scroll past a bunch of Rick Ankeel starts to get there. You have to scroll past a bunch of Rick Ankil starts to get there. And then there's Jason Lane, who was actually a pitcher when he pitched in a game, and Brooks Kieschnick, who was a two-way player.

So the number one position player pitching outing in terms of pitchings is Jose Oquendo, who threw 65 pitches in a 1988 game, a four-inning game that was 7-5. Yeah, Okendo was the answer to the trivia question for a long time in my life of the last position player to get a decision. What happened in that game? That was his second career pitching. So he threw three games in his career, one inning in 87, one inning in 91, and then in 1988 he got into one game and he finished the game and threw four innings in a game that the Cardinals lost 7-5.

Well, it was a 19-inning game, and so that's why. That's why. And so, yeah, I think at one point we talked about this. The pitcher, the position player as legit pitching option, which I mean, I guess he's not necessarily a legit pitching option, but like you're just simply out of pitchers. That didn't that doesn't seem to have really existed until fairly recently. You would see pitchers come in in blowouts, in mop-up games, but it seems like the Akendo was pretty unusual in that they used him in a game that was still very much up in the air. And it's more common these days, and it's part of the reason I think that pitching,

position players pitching totals have kind of gone up, because you now have two different ways for position players to get into the game. Yeah, well, we... He walked six and struck out one in four innings. on up because you now have two different ways for position players to get into the game yeah well we walked six and struck out one in four innings lucky to survive uh the first three i think you could fairly say i would think so 65 pitches 33 balls uh got four swinging strikes let's see 18 balls in play uh 15 of them in the air, the only other real position player pitching appearance with more pitches than Francoeur is 1994, David Howard.

David Howard. 1994, April 12th, he threw 49 pitches in a two-inning game for the Royals. And that was his only career Major League pitching appearance. So I don't know what the story was there. I don know if the the royals bullpen phone was off the hook like the phillies was but david howard and uh so this week wait wait tell me where's casper wells on that list because i remember casper wells being like lebron tired by his outing. Kasper Wells was 40 pitches. Okay, yeah.

So he's up there. Yeah, and Francoeur was too, but he was throwing pretty well. We kind of always wanted to see a Francoeur position player pitching appearance. So this week alone, in two days, Alexi Amorista, David Murphy, Ryan Rayburn, Jeff Francoeur, Jake Elmore, and Nick Franklin, and Jesus Sucre last week. So we're up to 11 on the season.

Haven't been tracking it this season like we did last season, because last season kind of seemed like the year of this. There were 23 last season and only 11 now, which is actually on pace for about the same, maybe even a little more. Okay. Okay. Emails. Okay. Okay. Emails. Okay.

All right. Well, we got a ton of hacking questions, even though we did a podcast about hacking. So I think one or two of them. Matt wants to know the focus of the best hack in baseball has been the exfiltration of proprietary data. However, couldn't a team that successfully hacked another accomplish much more by being destructive? What if they went in and edited all of the scouting reports by changing the grades and write-ups of all of the amateur and pro scouting, or manipulated or erased the data in the team's analytics department? Seems that it could

result in victim team taking action on bad data if done well enough or at worst cost them a lot of time and money to recollect the data and redo the scouting problem with that is a it's much harder to do i would think to delete and edit these things than to view them uh then yeah i do i need to remind you about kalinda in the Good Wife? Kalinda would have had no problem. She just could have gone into the metadata. Exactly. And done anything she wanted. Wait, so Zachary Levine asked a version of this too, right?

Zach, he told us what he would do if he had the supermarket spree. I thought that he, somebody asked, I thought it was him, but somebody asked whether it would be more useful to, uh, if, or maybe it was like whether the punishment would be higher if they downloaded the data and gave it to Deadspin, deleted all the data, in this case, doesn't matter if the team has backups, or subtly modified or corrupted the data? For example, touching 92 becomes touching 94, OFP 55 becomes OFP 50. Which of these deeds would hurt the team the most? Well, having worked with data recently that took a while for us to get right, I would say, there is nothing kind of more unsettling than knowing that, like, say, 5% of the data that you have is just worthless. And you've got a huge pile of numbers, and you're not sure which ones are

worthless and which ones are not because they've been subtly corrupted so there would be something very annoying about having had that happen but i think that the editing of it'd be awfully hard to make it both significant and not obvious uh-huh right yeah probably because if it's if it's a really significant player who's gonna come up in the draft room 10 times, then the scout who reported that player or turned on that report is probably going to get calls and he's going to be part of the discussion. And if the grades are all different, he's going to notice. So yeah, it would be hard to do it for a player you actually care about and change the the outlook for him so much that it would change a decision now deleting would be amazing like deleting deleting might be the cruelest thing you can deleting might actually be more well the problem with deleting is that you're only hurting one team

and you're not so you're you get 129th the return of if you can help your own team so i guess i guess if you could figure out a way to make use, well, you could do both. You could make use of their data and delete it entirely when you're gone. I mean, that would be super cruel, right? Yeah. Like, can you imagine if you were a scout and you spent,

because all you hear about the job of scouting is that it's grueling and grindy and you spend thousands and thousands and thousands of miles on the road watching horrible baseball away from your wife, eating terrible food and letting your body slowly just become awful because that's what the job demands of you. And at the end of it, you've got a bunch of reports on 17-year-old kids who you'll probably never draft or sign or be in a position to sign anyway. But then to have it actually just be deleted would be like – I don't know. I mean I could see that being particularly effective because if that happened, I could see like 30% of your scouting team just quitting.

Like never again. Never going to let that happen to me again. So that would be pretty cruel. So the punishments, let's answer the punishments one. Okay, so if you download the data and give it to Deadspin. So, well,

let's take all three. So downloaded and leaked. Deleted or modified. So in general, like if so, if you this comes up in other in other disciplinary things, if you drive drunk, baseball doesn't do anything about it. If you do it repeatedly, eventually they might steroids. They'll suspend you for a year. And if you gamble, they'll spend you for a year. And if you gamble, they'll suspend you for a year.

And these seem disproportionate. And it's been brought up that obviously one is a humongous societal wrong that you should be severely punished for generally. And the other is like, oh, OK, you put a placebo in your body or something. But Major League Baseball's governing authority comes from their ability to protect the integrity of the competition and so when a thing when a thing encroaches on competition that's when it becomes really severe and so that's why they leave the drunk driving or often they leave the drunk driving to the criminal justice system or whatever whereas with steroids they act with great severity and so the deadspin thing has nothing really to do with competition and so even though to me that is the probably the

most rotten and the one that is hardest to justify like i don't know is it it seems slightly it seems somewhat more hard to justify than deleting like You can fashion an argument that the other two are gamesmanship, particularly in a sport that has condoned cheating in various ways and that it's always renegotiating what cheating is noble and what cheating is ignoble. Is ignoble the word? That's the word that's the word all right and so uh so you could i think you could plausibly argue that that morality in matters of cheating in baseball specifically is subjective and that you you might have you might find something that a person has done in an effort to beat cheating to be wrong but they might not. And that, you know, ultimately they're, you know, they might be judged by their own subjective standard of morality. Whereas the deadspin example is just, you know, it's just, it's mean, like we talked about,

it's rotten. It accomplishes nothing except it's spite. And so therefore it's harder to defend now however based on what i just said mlb has less authority for governing spite or for sanctioning spite or for uh disciplining spite there isn't a real long spite section of the rule book and so i would think that i would think that mlb's authority would properly be a bit more restrained in that area and i would think that MLB's authority would properly be a bit more restrained in that area. And I would think that MLB probably, when they do punish whoever at the Cardinals is found to have done this, if indeed someone from the Cardinals is found to have done this, I would guess that the justification for that punishment will be that they have to protect the integrity of the data much more than they leaked embarrassing information. Like, for instance, I'm sure there are people in the Cardinals who have embarrassing stories about Jeff Luno, like, you know, whatever. Like, maybe they, you know, they could have peeked in his medicine cabinet or maybe they

went out, you know, drinking one night or something like that. And they could probably, if they wanted to, they could probably be really uncool and leak that stuff. And I don't think MLB would discipline them for that. This is clearly about protecting the integrity of the data, right? And of team processes, even though that's not really what was compromised in this specific situation, you're laying down a precedent to prevent compromising in the future. So all that to say that I would think that the worst sin would get the smallest penalty, the worst sin being the dead spin league.

Probably the deleting would be the greatest effect, and yet I would bet that it would be a smaller penalty than stealing it and using it yourself, which is sort of in the middle. Just because it's so out in the open, you know, it happened. There's no, there's no potential to not realize that the hack happened. You'd know immediately that it's gone and you can take steps to fix it. It, no, because even though to me, it seems like a more effective way of cheating,

it feels generally like a less effective way of cheating. You're simply blocking their signal. You know, you're not, it's, you know, it feels generally like a less effective way of cheating. You're simply blocking their signal, you know? You're not, it's, you know, it's the difference between, you know, the movie theater blocking your, the signal in your cell phone so you can't make calls, and the movie theater, you know, stealing your cell phone and using it to steal your identity. Like, one feels a lot more invasive,'t it doesn't i mean in a way uh as far as cheating goes it feels in the gamesmanship spectrum it feels sort of less extreme to just get in the way of the other team enacting their plan like stealing stealing their

labor generally feels uh dirtier than getting in their way, right? But it doesn't feel that way to me. I think it generally feels that way, but it specifically feels the opposite. This is a very hard thing to communicate, and probably it's difficult to know. I think a lot of these things, when you speak in hypotheticals, you're not sure. And then when the news breaks, you have a reaction that is actually different than you would have anticipated. Mm-hmm. You're not sure. And then when the news breaks, you have a reaction that is actually different than you would have anticipated. So I'm not sure that I would stick to this in reality. But do I need to give you an answer?

Have I given you an answer? Do I need a specific answer here? I think you could just name one of the three. I think maybe you have in the process of speaking. But leaking, deleting, and modifying, most severe penalty is? Well, deleting and modifying Most severe penalty is? Well, deleting and modifying I would consider the same crime So let's say leaking, deleting And stealing

And I would say that the penalties would go Upward in that order Sounds right And Zach wants us to make a prediction Based around the best hack in baseball He wants to know how long until the cardinals and asters are involved in a trade together he wants us to make predictions and add it to our predictions google doc so i guess the first question is just what's a good

guess for how long any team would be involved with any other one team and these are two teams that are contending now and would probably be both be buying for the foreseeable future so i don't know whether they would match up well but what would what would you say for just a random team the the average team with any other one team well what do you think a team makes? Are we only counting major league players or are we counting anything? Cash considerations for a minor league free agent to be? I think probably more interested in actual players changing hands both ways. How about this?

A deal that is mentioned in a transaction analysis okay all right so how many of those do you think a team is involved in in a year just generally four to seven so i'd say more yeah i'd say yeah i'm thinking of all transaction analysis entries now and we're just thinking of trade specifically. So yeah, maybe you're right. I'd go the higher end of that. But yeah, so let's say six. So let's say six.

So over the course of, I don't know, I can't do the math, Zachary could, but let's say that that would be on average, you'd think every four years you'd have a cause to run across the typical team, you know? Like if you had to bet on the Nationals and the Red Sox right now, would you go four years? Yeah.

Now, the Cardinals and the Astros, I think as we've seen, teams with similar philosophies trade with each other a lot more. And also I think what we've seen, I haven't proved this yet. I have a hypothesis that I haven't done the legwork on, but I believe that teams are significantly more likely to trade with their old organizations and for players that they knew in their old organizations. So you might speed that up in general. Yes. Although he's been gone for a few years now. in general yes although he's been gone for a few years now but but yeah but i mean he worked in the draft so there's a lot of guys who are i mean it takes a while for those guys to matriculate uh so you might normally you might say three for the corners and the answers although as you're

pointing out two contenders don't match up that well a lot of the time now i think that there's also the possibility that we could have a beer summit type situation where the people who were not responsible get together uh or yeah i mean we most people weren't responsible right presumably presumably we don't know that but regardless you could see them wanting to make a public show of how mature they are right yeah sure and that they're putting it behind them and that they respect each other. So you could even move it up further if you think that that's going to happen.

Or you could say whatever, scorched earth, never going to happen as long as Luna's there. Although that would not be process. That would not be good process. No, it wouldn't. You could also see him going out of his way to make sure that he is accounting for his own potential personality conflict biases.

Yeah. I mean, presumably the person or persons responsible for this infiltration will not be St. Louis Cardinals for long. So that will, you could kind of say that the slate would be wiped clean. you could kind of say that the slate would be wiped clean. There might be some lingering suspicion that someone who's still around knew about it or orchestrated it. I don't know. Maybe just some reflexive bitterness. But you would think that it would be kind of a clean slate. I'm going to say 31 months, and you can take the over or the under on that.

Okay. I would say 31 months, and you can take the over or the under on that. Okay, I'm going to say I would expect the Astros to be pretty active. They are wheeler-dealers. They are, which that kind of influences me. Cardinals are not, really. But I guess I'll take the under. You wanted me to take the over? Well, now you can win this bet. That's kind of why I did it.

I wanted it to be a sudden death that I could win at any moment. Yeah, your microphone will have broken by then, and we won't have this show anymore. So there's almost no way I can win. Doggone it. Good job, man it good job smart thinking okay we'll add it to our predictions google doc okay it feels like we've been talking a long time playing next sure really okay all right you're begging all right two question episode today i like no all right so uh max scherzer had a heck of a game.

You saw this, right? Yes. All right. So he struck out 16. Game score of 100. Game score of 100. And as was pointed out elsewhere, game scores of 100 are even rarer than perfect games in Major League history. Part, you know, somewhat of a, as all fun facts are, there's some lie in that, right?

As we know, game score is tilted toward the modern era. Now, I wondered about Max Scherzer's, as probably everyone did, I wondered what his worst game was ever. And so I looked, and his lowest game score ever as a starter was four. He had a game score that was four. And in that game, I think he went, uh, he went, uh, four and a third innings. This was with the Tigers in 2010, four and a third innings allowed 10 runs, all earned, uh, eight hits, four walks, and only one strikeout for a game score

of four, which four is very, very poor. It's not historically or anything bad, but obviously his worst start is very bad. So that's a difference of 96. And so I wondered who has the biggest spread in Major League history between their best game and their worst game. Seems fun, right? Sure. All right, so 96. We've got Scherzer at 96, and of course we're going to be able to beat that because it would just be too coincidental if he were the record holder.

And of course we're going to be able to beat that because it would just be too coincidental if he were the record holder. So I basically, this was pretty easy to do because, well, I took the top 300 game scores of all time for nine inning games only. I did not want to get into one of these 19-22 pitchers who threw 26 innings and like allowed nine runs for a game score of 3000. Like those games get crazy. And so this was nine innings only. And so I took the top 300 game scores ever. And then I took the next, uh, the bottom 300 game scores ever. And then I looked to see who was on both. And then I, uh, and then I checked a couple of possible players who might have managed to be the winner of this contest without being on both, but otherwise you basically have to be on both of these to win. And so I have three answers for you.

Okay. If you're interested in hearing all three. All three, please. All right. So first of all, the overwhelming majority of players on one spreadsheet are not on the other and that's partly because 300 is just not a lot of names to capture all of baseball existence but uh the number one uh the number three answer i'm going to say the number uh the number three answer i'm going to say here is bob feller so bob feller Feller had a 98 game score in one game,

and he also had a minus 14 game score in another. Sorry, minus 15. Minus 15. And so if you want to know what it takes to have a minus 15 game score, this is what it takes, Ben. You go seven innings. You allow 15 hits. You walk nine.

You strike out seven, and You allow 15 hits. You walk nine. You strike out seven, and you allow 15 runs. Wow. 15 runs. What year was that? So this was 1938. And the thing that's notable about this is that Bob Feller at the time was only 19 years old and pitching in his third major league season. I was looking at Julio U urias fun facts yesterday or thinking about

them so urias is like insanely young as you know he is currently uh so two years ago he pitched in the midwest league he had an area of i think 2.48 and he has not pitched there since because he had an area of 2.48 there is still no one in the Midwest league younger than him. Still. Really? Wow. He is more than two years ahead of any other pitcher in the Midwest league. And, um, and I was wondering, like, I was thinking how fun it's going to be in 20 years when I've forgotten just how young he was. And then I look back and I get to go through all the fun fact process again. Like, it's like reading a chooseadventure book that you've forgotten.

And he'll still be pitching. He will still be pitching, right. He'll be 38. He'll be in his prime. So Feller is the equivalent because Feller came up when he was 17 years old. 17. And this was pre-war. This wasn't even the war when everybody was you know like babies got to play he was he

was 17 years old in his rookie year he had a 3.34 era in a hitters league that was good for a 155 era plus as a swing man mostly starter he had a 155 era plus as a 17 year old man not bad that's incredible so two years later he was 19 and they let him they let him have this ridiculous game uh and in that ridiculous game by a by nate silver's pitch count estimator he threw a little north of 180 pitches as a 19-old in a game that was, let's see, in a game that was, wow, it might have actually been close. They lost 15-9. So if they'd pulled him after he allowed 12, it was 12-4,

and they scored three, so it was 12-7. You wouldn't say this game was close, I don't think. So in in a and they let him through yeah i mean they didn't know who knew ruined his career never pitched again pitched again yeah well i missed you know missed a few years like early 40s i don't know what was going on i assume that yeah he missed 43 to 44 i assume for bachelor. Yeah, he was in the war. Everybody, just be careful. So that year, his age 19 year, he threw, by Nate Silver's pitch count estimator, 5,036 pitches. Madison Bumgarner last year, who, remember, had the record for postseason innings and all that,

threw 1,000 fewer pitches. record for postseason innings and all that through a thousand fewer pitches so feller is a 19 year old through a thousand more pitches than bum garner through last year wow it's a lot of pitches yeah so uh so feller has a difference of 111 between his best start and his worst and that is uh not the winner even if it were the winner i would consider exempting it because that was just, that was not Bob Feller. That was, that was Bobby Feller, you know, like that was before he grew up and went by Bob. And so I don't know that I consider little 19 year old Bobby Feller to be the same as, you know, Robert Feller who, uh, had life insurance and threw the 98 game score years later. So anyway, Bob Feller, that's one. It's a good answer. It's not the best answer.

Number two answer is David Wells, surprisingly. And there's a couple of things that are surprising about David Wells. One is that he is on the top 300 game scores list three times and only one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven only 12 pitchers in history are on the top 300 game scores list more than him so like he's on there more than maddox and he's on there more than you know kurt schiller oh no he's not i should why did i say you picked one of the one of the 12 guys in history who you could not say that about. He's on there more than Ramon Martinez. See, that would have been safe. He's on there more than almost everybody.

Did I say Kershaw? He's on there more than Kershaw. He's on there as much as Verlander. He's on there more than Marichal. The 12 pitchers who are on there more than him, if you're interested, Bob Gibson, Kurt Schilling, Hideo Nomo, and Steve Carlton, four apiece. Mike Scott, five apiece. All from one year?

Let's see. 86 or whatever it was. He had a couple years there, but I'll check. It might have been. Roger Clemens. Sorry, Mike Messina, Tom Seaver, and Pedro, six apiece. couple years there but i mean i'll check uh might have been roger clemens sorry mike messina tom siever and pedro six apiece roger clemens seven sandy kofax and randy johnson nine apiece and nolan ryan 12 times all right i'm gonna answer your question about whether they were on the same year mike scott he was so good that year yeah mike scott 86 87 86 88 87 okay okay all right uh so david wells had a 98 and a minus 15 so

feller out of minus 14 david wells had a minus 15 and that made all the difference in the world so you could make a pretty good case that David Wells in the spirit of this conversation had the biggest spread between best and worst. And the third answer that you can choose if you want, and you probably should, is a guy named George LeClair.

And I think that I don't want to count this because it was the Federal League and not a super real league but he's still worth bringing up for one thing he's in the play index and the play index why would i overrule the play index if they declare the federal league to be good enough to include this query then i do too uh so leclerc was uh not not very good but this was his rookie year the pittsburgh rebels who had a player a cleanup hitter named rebel by the way but only one so the name was a lie well maybe they were named after

rebel it's like the cleveland naps when they had napplageajue. I know, but you've got to get a second one. I don't think they had multiple naps. So his rookie year, LeClair was pretty good. He had an ERA of 2.36 going into his 10th game, 10th appearance, second start of the year. And in that game, which was on August 16, 1914, he went eight innings, complete game, finished what he started, struck out nobody, walked eight, allowed 24 hits and 21 runs. They stole 13 bases against him.

And this is the most amazing thing. Because I looked in a whole bunch of other box scores and did not see this problem. And even the other team's box score does not have this problem. According to the box score, in these eight innings, only 16 batters made an out. They went 24 for 40. Wow. Now, that's probably impossible. I'm guessing that

he didn't get a double play to end every inning. It's possible that those 13 stolen bases came with eight caught stealings, which I don't think were recorded in box scores at the time. It's also possible maybe that they just quit batting

some innings. We've hit enough. Thank you. We'll come back and try again later. Every hitter on the team except for the pitcher, I guess, and the left fielder reached base at least three times. He was very bad. And I thought when I saw this that this was going to be one of those things where you know like the story of the team that like went on strike and so the owner just got a

bunch of guys from the bar and so now you have in baseball reverence you've got these guys who have one appearance and they allowed you know 39 runs or whatever in a game yeah uh it is not that he he pitched uh perfectly reasonably and then later in the year, he had a run of, these were his, these were actually, these were his next five game scores after that. 75, 55, 76, 80, 71. So he went minus 56. Minus 56 was his game score in the bad one. It is 21 points lower than the next worst. It is 21 points lower than the next worst. 21 points. The worst otherwise is minus 35, and he was minus 56.

There's only been like 90 or something games under. Well, there's been more than that. There's been about 200 games that are under zero, and he was minus 56. So the 80 that i mentioned doesn't count because it was a 10 inning game but nonetheless he had a minus 56 and a positive 76 in the same season uh that is 132 point spread so his spread is 132 david wells at number two his spread was 112 it's a clear winner if you count the Federal League, and if you don't mind choosing the pitcher with the worst instead of choosing the pitcher with the best,

which might be against the spirit of this. I was wondering where Felix ranked when you started this, and I looked as you were talking, and he's nowhere near those guys because he had that really bad start last week, the worst start of his career. That was a game score of 8 only, and his best is a 99, so 91 point spread.

Nothing. Couldn't even beat Scherzer. Nope. Okay, Play Index, coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. I have a Play Index-like answer to a question, kind of. It's a question from Aaron who says, is Hanley Ramirez a lot worse or is he getting punished by war for playing a less valuable defensive position? His slashline stats, WRC plus and WOBA are a bit lower than

last year, but not abysmal. How is it that he went from a three-fangraphs war player to a negative war player? Is it simply because being a bad shortstop is more valuable than being a bad left fielder? And the answer is yes, more or less. It is that simple. He's also been significantly worse at this point. He was, you know, he missed some time with the shoulder. He came back, he hit poorly after the shoulder. so his offense is down quite a bit after park adjustments related relative to last year but it's mostly that he has been an awful awful left fielder by the numbers by anything that you could possibly judge left fielders by and that's just the position it just the position switches what is

20 runs a year from shortstop to left? Yeah, right. It's huge. It's something like that. And he's been almost, I mean, he's been, by fan graphs, by UZR, minus 14 in left field, which is almost impossible to do. Yeah, that's hard because you're being judged against the worst fielders in baseball. Those things are relative to the average at your position. fielders in baseball those things are relative to the average at your position so he's being he's being judged against you know the occasional alex gordon but mostly mostly slow sluggers who can't play defense and you stick them out there because they won't hurt you that much and so he has been really bad relative to them even and in a small left field that is usually regarded as easier to play.

I mean, there's the caroms off the wall, but there's less ground to cover. So that is pretty impressive that he has managed to do that. So do you, if I can interrupt, do you think that this is real? I mean, it's generally assumed that pretty much anybody can play left field. That's what I assumed. You know, a lot of people were maybe skeptical that he could handle the outfield, and I figured, and probably the Red Sox figured because they've spent all that money on him, that even though he was a bad shortstop, if you could be a bad shortstop for years,

you should be able to stand in the outfield, you'd think. I saw there was a year that the angels didn't have a left fielder for a little bit and like and it was like sort of panicky and so both i saw both howie kendrick and alexi ramirez play left field for you know multiple games with like like literally hours of uh notice like they came into the park having not played there as a professional, period, and well into their careers. So, I mean, a decade or more since they'd ever played in the outfield. And they were both super legit. Yeah.

Like right off the bat. We've said it with the Stompers this season. You and I have just thought, well, you know, we could put him in left field. He could play left field. Just never having seen him play left field, probably has never played left field. You just kind of assume that a guy can play left field if he is at all athletic. And you have to be somewhat athletic to be a bad shortstop for years. So I don't know if it's real. I think having seen him play left field or seen, you know, I've mostly seen the low lights of him

playing left field. So my perception is probably skewed, but I don't know that there are that many highlights from, from what I've heard. So I don't know, you would think he would get better with additional time, or maybe he just won't get a chance because maybe it's the end of Ortiz or maybe not. He's hitting again now, but, but maybe he won't be around much longer and you just move him to DH for most of that contract. But the answer I wanted to give is how unusual it is for a player to hit as well as handling the mirrors and have a negative war, because that's tough.

You can come up with some guys who, like what's the Dante Bichette season is the great one in the height, the peak of cores where he hit 30 home runs and had just a crazy slash line and was negative war because he was a bad defender and huge park adjustments. But this is park adjustedadjusted stats. So I looked at WRC+, so over 100 is better than average, below average is below 100, and it's park-adjusted and everything. So of all the qualified offensive seasons since 88,

so that's 4,100-plus seasons. How many do you think qualified for the Hanley Ramirez of a weighted runs created plus above 110? So at least 10% better than league average offensively after park adjustments and a negative war in a qualified for the batting title season. Since what year? 88, over 4 000 seasons okay so since 1988 how many players have been at least 10 better than the average hitter but worse than replacement level yes overall while playing a full season while playing a full season

i will say between 68 and 70 it's actually much lower than that and maybe Hanley won't do it it's quite likely that he won't do it he's at negative 0.6 war so all he needs is a really good hot streak or just some defensive flukiness even even if he doesn't get better but only seven players have had the Hanley they are in chronological order 1991 mel hall for the yankees 1992 kevin reimer for the rangers 2004 bernie williams for the yankees and that sounds about right having watched bernie at the time although i loved bernie and I also liked watching Bernie, the movie. Yeah. But I did not watch it at the time. 2006, Kevin Millar for the Orioles.

2007, Ken Griffey Jr. for the Reds. And 2008, Brad Hopp for the Rockies. And lastly, 2010, Carlos Quentin for the White Sox. So it's a rare thing. So I didn't look at the positions that these guys played, but mostly outfielders and first basemen and stuff. Yeah, Quentin is, I think, as I recall, was a minus 37, because I think his name shows up in a lot of... Yes.

Oh, no, that was... It was minus 24 on on reference uh-huh he was yeah he was minus 32 on defense when you take into account his position and so relative to the average player in major league baseball he was a negative 32 the worst defensive season in this group was hop in 2008. That was 28. Yeah, or he was negative 42 with the positional adjustment included. That's bad. So the best hitter to do this has been Reimer.

Kevin Reimer for the Rangers in 92 was the best hitter to be replacement level over a full season. in 92 was the best hitter to be replacement level over a full season. And he was a 118 WRC plus, which in 1992 in Texas was 267, 336, 437. So that's that little trivia question. I'm going to guess that Hanley does not join that little fraternity, but it'll be something interesting to watch.

Okay. Last, last one, one more. This is from Dave, and he says, I was thinking about why defensive players and teams give away their defensive positioning and alignment before the pitch. Couldn't they simply shift a few steps or a few leaps a la Pedroia

during the pitcher's windup? This way they could disguise their alignment until it's too late for the hitter to do anything but focus on the pitch. I'm basically thinking of what the Patriots used to do against Drew Bledsoe, moving all their potential rushers around before the snap to disguise their intentions. I wonder if this is an actual rules violation or an unwritten one. It doesn't seem too different from when a second baseman or shortstop sneaks in behind a runner on second on a pickoff attempt. Considering how long many windups are, fielders could move quite a bit. I bet the second baseman could get from the traditional position for a lefty pull hitter

to the short right field currently in vogue, and the shortstop could make it from pulled over to straight up the middle, for example. This would go a long way to prevent any sort of strategic shift beating on behalf of the hitter, and perhaps even better, really screw with them. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of work. It does seem like a lot of work, and you could probably only really get away with it once, right? Like once per batter?

Yeah, well, once you do it once, then he knows where you're going to be, probably. Yeah, this is definitely if I do it once, then he knows where you're going to be probably. Yeah. It's definitely if I do it twice. Teams shift pitch to pitch based on the count. I don't know if they do it based on pitch type. I guess some guys move a step or two based on that, but probably not a full shift. But guys will move like with two strikes or something. But yeah, once you telegraph it once, then you've probably blown the surprise.

Yeah, it's definitely something I do in slow-pitch softball when I'm planning to rove, and I don't want the guy to know I'm roving. But yeah, the second time, you feel like an idiot. The other thing is that it might—I mean, your movement would be— I know your movement would be toward a place that a baseball could be, but it's also away from a place a baseball could be. It's also probably away from going in and out. If you think about it as you could go four directions on the pitch, left, right, depending on where the ball is hit, it will help you in one direction because you're moving there.

But the other three, it probably will have you not really on your, you know, your momentum would be bad or you wouldn't be on your toes. Right. Right? Yeah. I mean, I guess if you were confident that the ball was going to be hit in a certain place, then you should get a running start, right? Like if you, everyone should get a running start every time because if you're really playing the percentages and the guy you think he's going to hit it there then you don't have

to worry about how fast your first step is or your reaction time because you're already in motion but but yeah if the ball is not hit where you think it's going to be then your momentum is going to be going in a different direction and you're going to have to overcome that. And you're just, you know, fielders study the batter and the swing plane and that sort of thing and maybe get an initial read on where the ball is going to go. And maybe that's harder to do if you're sprinting around. And it's a lot to think about. Maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it distracts you just having to think about that, just being in motion before the pitch. So it seems like it, given the fact that hitters don't really seem to put much effort into beating the shift anyway, it probably isn't worth it.

If they did, then maybe. Good point. Okay. And Michael pointed out that if Omar Infante makes the All-Star team, per Kotz, his 2016 salary would increase from $7.75 million to $8 million. He has an All-Star bonus clause. Somebody else pointed out that if you really wanted to help your team, you would make sure none of them had to go to the All-Star game. That's right. You want them all to have this great vacation in the middle of the season. had to go to the all-star game you want them all to have this great vacation in the middle of season and so it is somewhat ironic that the royals are just like they're doing nothing but harm to their team the only potential is that salvador paris could have this season exactly

they're gonna make them we love you so much go do pointless work yeah right exactly well i guess i mean think of how much brand awareness the royals have gotten because of this whole all-star thing. I don't know what the value of that is, but surely someone would say it's something. But there has been a lot of speculation about people hacking the vote. So maybe Omar Infante hired someone to hack the vote. Could be. It'd be worth it for him. All right. So that is it for today. You can send us emails for our next email show at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com

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