Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 755: The Soundtrack to Your World Series Weekend

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about the Market Diner, then discuss World Series strategy and answer listener emails.

And I gotta get a meal ticket To survive, you need a meal ticket To stay alive, you need a meal ticket Feel no pain, no regret, no regret Designed to someone else Do yourself a favor A meal ticket, don't correct Do your stuff and fail, and me I'll take your dog for rent Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hello. The end is here for the Market Diner.

It's soon. It's closing Sunday. How many wraps are you going to put in your freezer? That's a good question. Pretty broken up about this. I usually get upset about things closing. I'm not a preservationist. I was a history major in college, just in case the English major didn't lead to riches and fame and fortune. But I like history. I used Fred Astaire as our intro

song yesterday and talked about Roger Angel. But I accept generally that the city constantly remakes itself and the old buildings go and the new buildings come. Just as we all come and go after distracting ourselves from the knowledge of our mortality by watching baseball. But this is tough. Hate to lose the Market Diner. Yeah. I was in there a couple of days ago and it took six minutes from sitting down to table full of food. Six minutes.

Where else can you get that kind of service? Uh-huh. Yeah. from sitting down to table full of food. Six minutes. Where else can you get that kind of service? Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, Ben, I don't want you to think I'm not sympathetic. I just don't know what to say. I don't have anything interesting to say about your diner. Yeah.

There's nothing you can say to make this any easier. I will say that I mentioned the freezer full of wraps. And one thing I did learn about you in Sonoma this year is that your freezer is generally a one-item box. The one item varies. But there are often, like once I opened it up and there were like nine packs of frozen spinach, I think. Yeah, I think it was frozen spinach and then like a week later there were i think 72 um otter pops yeah and then we had a lot of popsicles and then another week there were three costco-sized bags of chicken breast and they never so far as i can tell, there was no overlap.

Yeah. So imagine those meals that Ben was eating. Plus there is the empty pizza box with one crust. Yeah. That was a good one. Anyway, well, so, okay. You want to tell us any more about how you're going to say goodbye? Well, it depends.

It kind of depends on the Royals and Mets, really. We'll see. If the Royals can just do me a favor and sweep this thing, then I can be there for the last moments. Oh, are you going to the park? I would be, yeah. So now I guess I have something to root for now. I want to root for not going to the World Series so I can be at my diner's last day.

I think your bosses would understand if you had to go on bereavement leave. That's true. And I wouldn't have to make it up or anything. I was in there the other night and there was a camera crew just kind of with their camera in everyone's face just documenting the sadness. everyone's face just documenting the sadness and they were in there for i don't know maybe an hour just set up filming everyone coming in and then filming this guy and asking him if he was a regular and then just sort of filming him while he ate food and then they left and then all the organic moments happened immediately after they left this guy in a ups outfit came in and like met an old friend he hadn't seen in years

and they were like, when are we going to run into each other now? And he was like, time waits for no one. And it was this very sad parting that would have been great footage on Eyewitness News, but they weren't there. I didn't really like what I ate there. It's just kind of incredible how large the menu is and how quickly the food can be prepared. It's as if they're constantly preparing every item in case someone orders it. I don't know how it works. I think it doesn't work. That's why it's closing. Actually, the real tragedy of it is that I'm really sort of responsible for that i'm as guilty as anyone for this diner closing because i live in a building yeah that is no longer owned by but was developed by the developer that is building a building where the diner is so i am part of the process of wiping away old hell's kitchen

and replacing it with gleaming high rises soises. So I can feel guilty about that. Yep. All right. Time moves on. There's a diner on Ninth Avenue. Maybe I'll start going there. But when will we ever run into each other again? That's true.

So I wrote some stuff about the World Series, just sort of a five things to watch this weekend kind of thing that will be up soon. And I don't think it is as we speak, but you can probably go read it if you're listening to this. And some of the things that I wrote about, we've talked about already. But I think the most interesting thing to me is just how many strikes the Mets have thrown or how many non-balls the Mets have thrown. And we talked about it with Alcides Escobar, which is interesting. Also, I looked up the strike probabilities for the pitches that Harvey and DeGrom threw him, and they were like 98.8 and 98.9. So they were basically definite strikes and Darnot was set up more or less in the center of the strike zone.

So they seem to be fully intending to throw him strikes, even though he's swung at 11 of 13 first inning first pitches in the postseason, plus his last five regular season games. But we talked about that, but it sort of extends to the entire team because you would think that the royals would be a good team not to throw strikes to i think because they chase a lot they have the fifth highest chase rate in the majors second highest in the al there is no other playoff team in the major league top 10 so they are unusual in that they will chase pitches out of the strike zone and they do okay on pitches outside the strike zone, as you would expect, because they're good contact hitters. And when they swing at pitches outside the strike zone, they make a lot of contact too, but they make less contact obviously, and they hit the ball less hard.

Fewer good things happen. So you'd think that if you were going to stay away from fastballs because they hit fastballs really well, that you would go to the secondary stuff and you'd try to get them to chase, try to get them to expand the zone. And that hasn't really happened. The Mets have thrown more strikes to them than the Mets typically throw and that teams typically threw and that teams typically threw and that teams typically threw to the Royals especially. And the Royals have made contact on something like 83% of their two strike swings or something like that, which is maybe not so surprising because a lot of those two strike swings have been at strikes. I don't know whether it's that they don't have the right

mindset or game plan or that they just haven't executed well. It's kind of hard to say because Harvey didn't seem to have good stuff. And then DeGrom has had some rough starts and between the two of them, maybe there's some fatigue or workload effect. And so maybe they're just missing over the plate when they're not intending to. But if I were the Mets, my piece of advice for the mets is stop throwing so many strikes i thought we were doing emails we will we will oh okay um so the other interesting thing i guess is to see what happens with kendris morales since he's not starting because of the dh this weekend that means ned yost will actually have to pinch hit, which is a rare sight.

Yeah, but he'll have a pitcher spot to do it. Yeah, so it will happen. He did get pinch hit for several times in games at NL Parks this year, but I wonder whether it'll be like a save him for the last possible moment to pinch hit, save him for the last possible moment to pinch hit, or whether he might actually consider using him like in an early rally or a mid-inning rally, or whether he'll just stick with guys longer than maybe he should. Or whether he would, now that he has Morales on the bench, whether he would consider using him as a pinch hitter for,

for instance, Alex Rios against a right-hander. I mean, he doesn't pinch hit for hitters, but he also doesn't usually have great pinch hitting options on his bench that would be better than his starters. And Morales against a right-hander is miles better than Alex Rios as a right-handed option, and then you can do your defensive switch after anyway. That is true. Okay, so we'll do a few emails.

I'll try to pick some playoff themed ones. Eric in Millbrae says a similar one to the Cueto value question you answered the other day. If Daniel Murphy's next contract value was 100% on October 8th, and you are a GM with a need in the offseason, what is it now? What more would he have to do to convince you to actually change your projections and there was a report right anonymous gm anonymous algm who said 75 million for daniel murphy i don't know if he specified years but still that's a big number for daniel murphy and And was that, did I see that, when I saw that, I thought I saw also 3-30 for Alex Gordon by the same deal? Yeah, I don't think that was the same source, but I saw them paired in a tweet. Okay. Well, I mean, if I were a GM, then it would be like 101.

Like, it'd be like 1% more. Like, I would treat it like 50 plate appearances that he uh did pretty well i mean he's having a better year now right he's has he had 14 home runs now he has 21 home runs he had a 770 ops now it's probably close to 800 and so just in in that respect he's a little bit better uh but i would not to me a hitter who we've talked about this before but a hitter who has 50 really great plate appearances doesn't really move the needle at all uh whereas a pitcher who has uh some a couple of really awful starts that you can maybe tie to a loss of velocity and the omnipresent knowledge that it is only a matter of time before he's hurt and it

might have already happened can that can change a lot and so so like with Cueto I mean I'm answering this from my perspective not from hypothetical GMs but for Cueto it's a lot easier to go well you know pitchers break and he kind of looks broken. But 30-year-old hitters don't generally break out. And I'm not, I mean, there's no part of me that thinks Daniel Murphy is breaking out. Verducci does, though. What about the part of you that believes Verducci? Well, you're confusing what I like about Verducci with some of the things that I, you know, Verducci is just another guy.

with some of the things that I, you know, Raducci's just another guy. So I will say like virtually nothing changes. Now, as to whether he will get more, whether there's a hypothetical GM out there that will give him more, we'll never know what all 30 hypothetical GMs would have given him. So it's impossible to know.

We'll never know. There's always a couple of contracts that are head scratchers anyway. And maybe Murphy will happen to be. We'll never know. There's always a couple of contracts that are head scratchers anyway, and maybe Murphy will happen to be one of those by chance. But I would guess that he does not get a surprising contract. I don't know what a surprising or unsurprising contract would be, but he is a versatile infielder who can play second and third and is an above average hitter. So that's a guy that I would probably be thinking would be looking for, well, would be asking for a contract like Melky Cabrera's and would get a contract like maybe 3-39 or 3-45.

And that's about what I would still expect him to get. 45 and that's about what i would still expect him to get yeah i it feels like the sort of thing that when people put together their list in a week or two of potential free agent pitfalls or overpays or whatever he'll be at the top of the list but i bet that doesn't actually happen because it just it does seem really hard to believe that anyone could buy this in a really significant way i mean he might be a little better but even if he's a little better he's also getting older and that will make him worse and he's not a good fielder and it just doesn't seem like that compelling a package all right is so is would you think that 3-39 or 3-45 is a compelling package? Or, like, have we disagreed here?

I mean, I guess that's probably higher than I would have said if you had asked me before the playoffs what I thought Daniel Murphy would get. Mm-hmm. So in that sense, yes. Okay. All right. sense, yes. Okay. All right. Fergal from rainy Ireland, his words,

not mine. I was interested in your discussion on the shutdown inning as the Boston media became obsessed earlier in the year with Rick Porcello's supposed inability to produce a shutdown inning. This came to a head after a five, two loss to Baltimore when Porcello himself claimed that it was on his mind and that he felt he was pressing too hard in search of the shutdown inning. Could this be an example of a purely spurious notion having an actual effect, i.e. a thing

which is not a thing becoming a thing because enough people believe it to be a thing? Do you think that observer effects can produce measurable effects on player behavior or how could that even be determined by the numbers assuming you can't inspect rick porcello's brain chemistry on the mound it makes sense if you think that players are already in danger of pressing too hard a lot. And I think it's still generally my default that I don't assume that when I see somebody struggling in some situation, particularly in a small enough sliver of overall total performance.

And so just, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is like, I don't think Rick Porcello presses that much just generally. Like, I think that probably he's shown over the course of his life that he's able to pitch in front of scouts as a 15-year-old and not freak out. And he's been able to pitch in front of his director of player development as a 19-year-old and A-ball and not freak out. And he's been able to pitch in his major league debut and not freak out and to pitch in playoff games and not freak out and to pitch in seventh innings with the bases loaded and not freak out and to pitch for a new team and to pitch right after signing a big contract. And all these things I just generally think,

oh, well, he's managed to pitch in those sorts of things. And so it would be a very specific phobia that would cause him to suddenly lose his ability to moderate his pitching because he heard a buzzword from Cal Ripken on another team's broadcast or whatever. Now, possible. I mean, it's possible that, I mean, it would certainly do it to me, for instance, like if it were me, then this imaginary thing would, this spurious thing would produce measurable effects on my behavior. But I generally give

players the benefit of the doubt that they're not. And i wouldn't set this as a more daunting challenge than any of the many many other daunting challenges they face as professional athletes but yeah also could be i mean normally if if there was a way that it changed strategy for instance like if the shutdown inning became like sort of a prevent defense kind of a situation where the team was playing differently because they were trying to shut down the other team, then you could see potentially tangible ways that behavior changes. You could maybe say that the solidification of bullpen rolls has changed strategy, and so this also perhaps spurious notion of the closer or the save

has led to actual changes in the way the game is being played maybe for inefficient or maybe for efficient reasons and but i don't think that we're to that point with the shutdown inning i don't think the managers are treating shutdown innings so far as like i wouldn't expect if i looked for a shutdown inning effect on managers bringing in like new relievers because they suddenly have the lead or something like that. I wouldn't see that. So it seems still like just one of 2,000 or so ideas that exist in the game that are just kind of background noise. So what if the player says something about it? Then do you believe that it's bothering him?

Or do you think? I mean, yeah, so this is kind of what I do. I'll read you his actual quote. He said, I honestly think I need to stop making so much of a big deal about it and just go out there and pitch like I've been pitching. Every time we scored a run or whatnot, if you start pressing to go out there and put up a zero it starts working against you yeah i i mean so when i was when my wife and i were thinking about what to name our child we were you can always find the way that kids will make fun of your kid's name you know and you're trying to avoid that and so like for the first like 70 000 names that you

think of you're like oh no kind of rhymes with poop or whatever yeah don't you wonder what name we were thinking of that would rhyme with poop yes uh anyway then you realize oh well no they're it's not the name that the kid gets made fun of it's being a kid that the kid gets made fun of. It's being a kid that the kid gets made fun of. And if you don't name them anything weird, they will get made fun of for something else. The name is just a convenient thing that you can grab in this war that all children are waging against all other children. And to me, this is probably a thing that Rick Porcello was grabbing as an answer to a question or as a means of explaining to himself uh or i don't know self-pitying or maybe focusing something he could focus on it is it was a thing that was there in front of him for him to grab but i don't suspect that

really if you took that away that his brain chemistry would be improved. I think he would find some other thing to grab to explain why he wasn't winning the baseball games. That's all. year the walk year effect and there have been studies that showed that there's not really much to it but every time every once in a while it sort of seems like there is but you can never know for sure it might just be a bunch of other things that happen to be in a contract year and maybe the player even then seizes on the contract year as the reason why he's not doing well but it could be the reason why certain guys don't do well. Every now and then, I assume that someone manages to slip past all of the things that prevent, like, a head case from becoming a big leaguer,

or, you know, not a head case, but something less severe than that. But, yeah, I generally agree with you. All right, play index? Yeah, sure. than that but yeah i generally agree with you all right play index yeah sure so um raul mondesi raul adalberto mondesi might make his major league debut in the world series which is an extraordinary thing right everybody is everybody has acknowledged what an extraordinary thing that would be and um i wanted to know there's another thing about how he might seems likely in fact to make his major league debut that i wondered if it was also extraordinary and that

is as a pinch runner it seems likely that he will make his debut as a pinch runner right maybe a defensive replacement probably a pinch runner and so i wondered how often guys have made their debuts as pinch runners if it's extremely common which i could see being the case or if it's quite rare which i could see being the case and whether it tells us anything at all and so i went to the play index i looked for batter game batting game finder, and selected the defensive position pinch runner and restricted it to player's first career game and then got my report. I went since 1988, of course. I approve of everything you've done so far. Excellent. And so then I have a list of players who've made their Major League debut as a pinch runner. And, of course, there are guys who are super fast like Billy Hamilton and Terrence Gore.

And then there are guys who just their pinch running was like in the least leveraged situation that you could possibly put a guy in. And they're not necessarily even fast. And they just like entered a game in the ninth when they were up nine. Anyway, since 1988, there have been 193, 196 players who have made their debut pinch running. And so I'm looking through this list and wondering whether there's anything notable about this group of players. And one of the things that's somewhat notable is that there aren't many good players on here. And the best is probably Jose Bautista, maybe Torrey Hunter.

And the third best is probably Shane Victorino or Michael Young well that's probably Mike Young and then Shane Victorino and Juan Pierre and guys who like are you know you know them but there's not a hall of famer on this list the closest thing to a real true elite player is Jose Bautista but he's not going to make the Hall of Fame. Nobody's going to make the Hall of Fame. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. Maybe Mondesi, if he pinch runs to start his career, maybe I can conclude that he's not going to make the Hall of Fame. Conclude for very spurious, non-statistical, non-scientific reasons, but I can conclude it all the same. I'm free to do that. So then I wanted to check this though. So

I went back to 1950 and looked from 1950 to 1987 at the same exact thing. And it's a very different group. There are 300 in that time. You went back to prehistory. I did, yeah. there were 300 in that group and um which is about the same per year more or less but in that group we have uh edgar martinez who's not a hall of famer but should be and is better than anybody i named we have ryan sandberg we have cal ripken we have tim rains we have dwight evans who you could make the case should be a hall of famer we have tony larusa who's like a managerial hall of famer we have kurt flood who i think is probably in the museum uh and we have norm cash who's kind of borderline and is probably better than anybody i named in the other one and we have harman killebrew who is a hall of famer and we have did i say tim raines did i say

tim raines i didn't hear tim raines i well tim raines as well who's clearly good enough to be hall of famer and we even have my favorite of them is greg maddox who uh made his major league debut as a pinch runner if you can believe it and so this brings me brings me to the actual thing I want to ask you about, which is, well, so for one thing you can say, well, maybe it makes sense that there were more guys debuting as pinch runners because there were more guys pinch running. And I don't know if that's true, but it seems like there were more guys pinch running in the era before you had to carry 13 pitchers on your roster. The other thing is Greg Maddux as the pitcher makes you wonder about pitchers pinch running.

And so I then expanded this or changed. I zigged. I went over to a completely different topic, which is pitchers pinch running in any number game of their career. Just pitchers pinch running. How often does it happen? Does it happen more or less? And so, Ben, I'm now going to tell you a little bit about baseball behavior and how it has changed. Okay. In the olden days, like in the 50s and 60s, there were about 125 to 150 instances each year of a pitcher pinch running. And this is in a pre-expansion, well, early expansion era. So fewer games being played, fewer teams playing 150 ish per year it peaked in 1964 at 162 and as late as 1972 it was 144 and then starting in 1973 which is a significant year in baseball history because the mets the dh yeah Yeah. Bloomberg. Starting in 1973, it went down. Probably starting in 1973, it went down.

It's hard to say because in 1970, for instance, in 1969, there were 94 instances. In 1971, there were 99. But then in 72, there were 144. And then it went back down to 99. And then in 1974, it was 90. And then 75, it really drops drops so the third year of the dh it really drops severely to 50 59 46 45 and then in 82 it drops all the way down to 18 18 instances of pitchers pinch running and that might be where we that might be where you say that a new

era has begun where pitchers pinch running is very rare. There are some years where it spikes up to like six in the 60s. And then there's some where it's like 20, 15, 18, three years in a row. And then it levels off at around 30 a year. And this year, sometimes a little more, but usually around 30 a year. This year, there were 28 instances of pitchers pinch running. And I wonder if you would have expected that or not, because on the one hand, pitchers are much worse hitters and we're also, it seems like more cautious about putting pitchers

in situations where they might get injured. And so, so there's maybe less gain to putting a pitcher like you might expect pitchers to be more pathetic i guess is what i'm saying right uh and also uh with the dh in the dh era i would imagine that a lot of pitchers who pinch run pinch run for pitchers and uh if fewer pitchers are on base in the first place fewer would pinch run for them so it does make sense that for those reasons that it would go down however you would also think i would think especially now particularly now that in the 13 pitcher bullpen era or the 12 pitcher bullpen era that you're not able to carry a pinch runner and if you have a pitcher who's reasonably fast that you would use

him a lot more. We've seen with other teams in other ways that teams run themselves that flexibility and using people in different roles and essentially looking at these guys as athletes that should be used in whatever way their athleticism can be leveraged, regardless of whether it is their traditional role, is a way to gain a little bit of an edge on your opponent. So if I had any sort of reasonably fast pitcher, and there are some, I wonder whether a Joe Maddon type manager wouldn't use that guy a lot, treat him like a weapon to be used every day, and if you don't use him, then you're wasting him. So I was kind of surprised that we haven't seen a little.

I could have seen it being the opposite and having hit a low maybe around the late 80s, but then rising with every. Plus, the other thing is that in a 12 or 13 pitcher bullpen, you have 13 pitchers. Now, I guess you're using them more. You don't want to use your loogie in a pinch running role uh because you need to use them to get a lefty but you have 13 pitchers like a huge percentage of your roster is pitchers and the odds are better that one of them is fast right yeah right i guess the more pitchers you have the more likely it is that one of them can run. Yeah. So anyway, but it hasn't happened.

Now you know. Yeah. I guess, I mean, the whole history of baseball is specialization, right? Or I guess the whole history of everything. So it sort of makes sense that the fewer pitchers who can hit, the fewer pitchers who are just athletic enough or spend any time training to do anything. I mean, pitchers run, but they just jog. They, you know, do laps around the warning track or something, but they don't sprint. I mean, you know, I'm sure some of them sprint, but they don't really train for it. And I mean, yeah, if it's your last guy in the bullpen, And I mean, yeah, if it's your last guy in the bullpen, then you might as well, because a lot of teams are treating their last guy in the bullpen as kind of an interchangeable part right now anyway, where it's just a fungible piece that's going back and forth, then you'd be inclined to use him.

You'd be less inclined to use any good pitcher because you'd be even more worried that he would hurt himself because he doesn't run or doesn't prepare to do this. And, you know, if you cost yourself even one start of a good pitcher because you put him into pinch run, then it's probably not worth it. So there is a because a lot of the value of pinch running is stealing. And the guy would have to be really like it's different to have just a fast guy who can run faster from first to home or second to home than prince fielder or something but it's different to have someone who actually knows how to time stolen bases and take leads and you know know how to run and so if it's a pinch hitter who has no possibility of stealing then it takes some of the value away from the pinch hitter or pinch runner yeah it takes some of the value

away you you but there are probably there are probably uh advantages to be gained just by pinch running for a slow guy you know a sluggish guy or yeah whatever whoever your slowest guy is i wonder if you know we've talked about the bill james theory that i think at least i believe for why there are no left-handed catchers being that if you're left-handed and can throw well enough to catch, then somebody has definitely made you a pitcher along the way if you have a good enough arm to pitch And are fast enough to be this kind of pinch runner Somebody has definitely made you An outfielder at some point Okay, that's it for Playindex

That's it for Playindex Not forever Shut it down Just like the market diner Alright, use the coupon code BP Get the discounted price of $30 On a one year subscription Just like the market diner. All right. Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Since we were talking about bullpens, Andrew asked,

with people talking more lately about ground ball fly ball pitchers and their relative advantages over different kinds of hitters, I wonder, does it make sense to apply some similar reasoning to the bullpen? Might we see a bullpen one day with a structure like closer, setup, fly ball guy, ground ball guy, lefty specialist, long man? Would a team do better or worse with a bullpen if they played the ground ball fly ball matchup with their relievers instead of the lefty righty matchup? Any thoughts would be great. I think I've always, I think a lot of teams do like to have a ground baller and if you do it gets mentioned i always thought what not not recently but i always it always felt like there was a ground baller in the bullpen like i would in my head growing up i always

knew who the ground baller was and you'd be like ah double play situation bringing the ground baller seth manis uh-huh uh i'm thinking of scott munter is mine uh and uh so yeah makes sense the guy though that's the guy you bring in regardless of who's hitting you just need a ground ball in that situation uh-huh oh it's not like playing the platoon effect. Oh, I see. I see. So this was, I understand now, this was asking about the platoon effect, not about the micro-specialization of pitchers, but rather about taking advantage of hitter-pitcher weaknesses. Yeah.

Yeah, it's probably too small an effect to actively manage to actively manage your roster around i mean there's a very finite number of baseball players available and you have to talk every single one of them into coming to you uh at some point or another except for the ones you trade for and uh so my guess is that it would be a bigger headache and uh too small a gain to uh to to do relative to simply picking the best pitchers you can find as often as possible regardless. I agree. All right. And last one from John in Toronto. This was before recent news about managerial hirings. With Mattingly on the market, what impact could his intel on the new dodgers system have on the padres considering hiring him obviously mattingly went to the marlins padres

have a new manager too but we'll take this question as it was asked what value in picks or players or cash could we place on existing managers for the dodgers to offer trades for managers like hurdle hinge or bench coaches from an organization they feel they can gain advantages So basically, what value is there in knowing another team's system, whatever that entails, whether it's their coaching strategies, their data that they get from the front office would you hire a coach because of that especially if it were a rival that you play often yeah generally i i think that most teams trust their own data and think that their data is smarter than other teams data but they shouldn't they shouldn't but i think they do and so if mattingly came in and said oh no yeah i saw something that said this guy's definitely going to do this.

And then your front office is like, nope, they're definitely doing the other thing. I don't think that you'd necessarily convince them. But it seems small. It seems like not much advantage and things change quickly. advantage and things change quickly. And I also don't think managers are that in touch with, or not in touch, but that exposed to the nitty gritty data. I don't know that they know that many secrets. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say. They could if they wanted to. I mean, look, we do know, we talked about how back when we were talking about team ways,

we talked about how every team's manual ends up getting distributed around baseball because your roving catching instructor goes from one organization to the other and brings his Braves way manual or Cardinal way manual and goes, oh, well, here's their manual. And nobody really looks at it. Nobody really cares because there aren't really that many secrets. And the secrets that teams have, like I always think that teams have way less secrets than they act like they have,

that they're far more concerned about protecting secrets than they are about stealing other teams because nobody else has that much good stuff like you can have a a smart organizational philosophy but mattingly is not gonna be like guys their philosophy you got to hear this philosophy and so probably hard to see a gain could happen there probably are individual instances but hard to see a big advantage big game yeah i think that's probably true if i were choosing between two candidates and one of them had worked for another team that had was known as really smart or something or seemed to know things other teams didn't i might use that as a tiebreaker just to

get some intel on what that team is doing but i mean it it seems like 98 of all the that separates good front offices from bad front offices is is actual competence and actual ability to execute and it's like i mean if there's anything we've learned over the last few years and about 150 discussions on this podcast, it's that there is not a way to win. All these different ways are very valid as long as you are a smart, competent person who makes decisions using good heuristics

and hires smart, competent people to be around you, basically. And none of that can be smuggled out in data. You can't smuggle out competence. And so, yeah, the so-called secret that some team has hidden in their front office just seems to be like a big myth, a big red herring, a big, you know, thing that doesn't really exist. There is no good stuff in there particularly. Okay. That's enough questions for today. I was thinking about Roger Angel. Are there

any writers that you use as kind of a, like a calibration system for yourself? How do you mean like sometimes when i feel like i'm not writing well or i'm i don't know that i just feel like the tone is off or i'm getting too bogged down in stats or something i'll just go like flip to a roger angel page in a book or i'll just go look at a roger angel post online and just read a few paragraphs and I feel like it recalibrates my system somehow and I remember what I'm trying to do not that I can necessarily do it but at least I remember what I'm aiming for is there anyone who serves that function for you well I the best answer is um swan Swan's Way. I can read any page of Swan's

Way and, and it will, uh, it will, it will get me a little bit closer to the path. Uh, and I don't do this with him, but I feel, I feel kind of inspired and recharged and not recharged so much as reorganized anytime I read anything that Tommy Craggs writes. So maybe those two. Okay. So you can send us more emails at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild

and rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Watch the World Series. Have a final last supper at the Market Diner. Have a nice weekend, whatever you're doing. We'll be back on Monday.