Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 774: The Thanksgiving Emails Episode the World Didn’t Want You to Hear

Episode Date: November 26, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about troublesome software (for some reason), then answer emails about constructing sensible trades, solving moral hazard, subbing for Andrelton Simmons, and what makes free agents happy.

Thank you, friends. Wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. I'm so grateful for all the things you helped me do. All the ladies and gentlemen who made this all so probable? 38 joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello. Our plan was not to record a Thanksgiving episode, but this is take two. This is our second attempt at this listener email show. We had a technical malfunction. I won't mention the program that we use to record our calls or that I use to record them because I feel like it would not be fair to single it out at the rare instance when it didn't work, when it serves us faithfully most of the time. But after we tried to record and only ended up with about 10 minutes of the fairly long show we did, I went to their update page and saw that there was a new version.

And the new version was released because a few users were reporting interruption of call recording before actual call was ended. So I am now one of those users. We got a new version now. We're ready to go. Okay. And ironically, I always update software. I find software updates extremely satisfying. Do you? Yeah, I don't know about you, but it ranks right up there with unsubscribing from emails. If I can update some software and unsubscribe from an email, I consider it a successful day. What do you mean unsubscribe from an email? Are you on a lot of mailing lists? Yeah, I never subscribe to an email, but somehow I am subscribed to a bunch of them.

I'm very vigilant because I like the emails I get to be real emails, not people trying to sell me something I don't want. I don't know how I end up on those kinds of emails, but whenever I do, I click on subscribe and I really enjoy that. So my, uh, my equivalent would be eating leftover fried rice, which is what I'm doing right now. Oh, well that's good. Yeah. fried rice which is what i'm doing right now oh well that's good yeah but if i could if i can get some up-to-date virus spyware definitions that's always good i feel like i'm getting something

free like i got a product and they're just making that product better and i don't have to do anything it's great oh my god was the first time we recorded this episode this bad? I think it was, yeah. Wow. Yeah, you'd think we'd be better this time. This is bad, though. Yeah. All right.

Well, this is new. This is not rehearsed. This is new banter that we didn't have the first time. Do you remember if we had any banter? No. We went right back. We went right into the emails. we did anyway the only problem with updating software is oh my god it always tells you is that is that the only problem yeah you have to restart i don't enjoy

the restart after you remember when restarting used to be a real process? Like you'd click restart and you had enough time to get up and go do something. It was really going to chug away for a while. That's not the case anymore. Pork belly fried rice is what I've been into lately. That's good. Yeah. Right now it's just young chow fried rice. The problem is that if you don't do the restart, then it gives you the option to defer it for four hours and i always choose

that but then four hours go by and i'm still doing exactly the same thing that i was before and now i'm aware of how much time has passed and how little i've accomplished we've spent more time on this than we spent on the twins this year yeah that's true, we did a whole podcast on the twins once. This hasn't been a full episode yet. Has it not been? All right. All right. We felt that we needed to give people something to listen to over Thanksgiving to pass the time on your travels or drown out your family or however you want to use this episode. So we will go into emails now.

So we will go into emails now. And the problem is that we both have the compulsion to point out when we have said something before to anyone. Even if we just said it in a private conversation and now we're talking to someone else, we have to acknowledge that we said it the first time. That's a problem now. Which, by the way, I now feel the compulsion to say as we say every time we do this. Yeah, right. That's a problem now because we have both said a lot of these things to each other. So just a blanket disclaimer, we have said some of these things before. My strategy is to say all new things.

You're going to get all my second best opinions. Okay. If you can pull that off, that'd be wonderful. All right. Okay, if you can pull that off, that'd be wonderful Alright, so, emails We'll start, as we've done before, with a question from David Who says, as you were talking about the Andrelton-Simmons trade I started thinking about how to fix the Angels

And who they could trade to fix the team I went full hog and thought Trout Then I thought, who has the talent to trade for Trout? And I thought, who has the talent to trade for Trout? And I thought Cubs. So the Angels trade Trout for Kyle Schwarber, who will play left field, Javier Baez to play second base, and Dexter Fowler to play center field. And then the Cubs use Vogelbach or Almora to trade for a young pitcher and throw that into the mix.

As soon as I throw out a trade like that, what is the first sign to an industry expert that this is a fan-generated trade idea versus an industry insider hypothetical trade scenario? How can I make my potential fake fan trades sound more legit? It's a very good question, and he came to the right place. Yes. Because, Ben, you are not just an industry expert ben no you

are not even not even one yeah that's true too you are an expert in this specific micro niche area of the industry you are probably the world's foremost expert on fan proposed trades correct yeah you yeah i mean you could say that a fan who proposes the trade is an expert at doing that. No, no, no. I'm not an applied trade generator. I'm more of a scholar of other people's proposed trades. Right. And you are probably the only scholar in the world of this.

So who have you done this for? You went and you found all the trade proposals. You found every fan base's crazy trade proposal for Stanton. That was the first one, right? Yeah, and also David Price. It has to be one of those where it's a really prominent player who every team would want, and everyone knows he's available. And when you get that, it's just a perfect storm, and you get Yahoo Answers,

and you get blog posts, and you get comment sections where people propose trades and almost invariably those trades favor their own teams. The first time we recorded this, we then went on a little bit of a conversation about each of our strange niches in baseball writing. Yeah. And I wondered if since we talked about that, if you've been thinking of any others. I've been thinking about it. I don't know if I've actually come up with any, though. Yeah, my strange beats were long plate appearances and maybe catcher framing and maybe bunting to beat the shift was something I was following very closely for a while.

I don't know if there's anything else. But yours were profiling fans that appear in certain ballparks and fans not paying attention to the action in front of them yeah particularly fans who are not paying attention yeah what else did i have i had a couple not as good not as developed as yours uh i did think of a really good one but i forgot no i didn't Maybe in our third attempt At doing this episode you can mention it So horrible

Horrible baseball games Oh yes right Is one of mine as well So as the Expert in this very limited Subject I will point out That the first giveaway That this is a fan generated

trade idea is that it involves a player who is not currently under one of these teams controls dexter fowler who is coming back to the angels in this trade is not actually a chicago cubs player he is a free agent and therefore he cannot be traded by the Cubs. And that was actually a fairly common thing I came across, I think, in my travels of comment sections. So that's one of them. The main giveaway, the usual giveaway, is the many for the few trade construction, where it's five spare parts for one superstar and somehow those spare parts each of them is worth a win or something and somehow that gets you a five win player even though you have to you know use five roster spots on on the junk and this is something that you see

all the time in fantasy leagues obviously just trying to pawn off the players you don't want on someone to get a player that you do want. And most of the time that person is not going to want the players that you don't want for the same reasons that you don't want them. So that is often a characteristic of these trades. And fair to mention, as you have before, that there is a carve-out for prospects, obviously. If you're doing a five-for-one and two of those guys are top prospects, that's obviously a little bit different.

It's mainly when every player involved is a major leaguer. That's when you tend to get into trouble because there's no way that you can make that work. That's when you tend to get into trouble because there's no way that you can make that work. And then maybe the third distinction of this type of trade is that it's a Mike Trout trade at all, which is just a very far-fetched scenario. The Angels are not going to trade Mike Trout. No one's even going to try to trade for Mike Trout. He's too valuable. He's too central to the franchise. He's

under team control for too long. In theory, you could come up with a trade proposal, maybe, that would make it worth the Angels' while to trade Mike Trout. But in practice, it would never happen. So yes, that is all correct. I think that the crucial thing to me is when a person starts to include prospect names that are just maybe a little too specific. I find that there's no need to say the prospect's name. I'm much more comfortable with someone saying, I'd like my team to trade for Giancarlo Stanton and we should give them prospects. To me, that is not a good trade proposal by any means, but it is a realistic one. It is not realistic to say out of this system of 200, I'm going to name the four. And so anytime I start seeing the names of prospects, I almost

always have decided this is a crackpot trade proposal. Now, I am okay with saying the kind of prospect archetypes that will populate this trade proposal. So if you say, oh, well, you know, his surplus value is whatever. And so, you know, we're talking about two top 10 prospects or three top 50 prospects. Or like if you sort of go with, like if you reference a previous trade and you say, so so you know, like that, a top 50 prospect, maybe a guy at the back of the top 100 and then a live arm, I'm okay with that. That's good. That's prospect types. If you name the live arm, if you picked your 19-year-old Venezuelan in the Midwest League

that you're going to trade in this hypothetical deal, that's not good. That's just not a good way to do it because that's not, like you don't know what they want, you don't know what they like, you don't know what the other team's scouts... It's just not how it works. They have their own scouts. They already have ideas about who they like. I would say that that to me is the... I don't know that that's exactly the answer to this question, but to me that is probably the way that we could collectively improve our horrible trade proposaling, maybe. Yeah, I would say just make sure that the trade is painful for you. If it's a trade that you would maybe want to see happen, but at the same time be sad that it

happened because you gave up something very valuable, that's a sign that it's a reasonably constructed trade proposal. The simpler the better as well. Yeah, that is true. That is good advice. The simpler the better, you can always say, I mean, you know, one for one and then go and then some other stuff. And then they'll figure out the other stuff.

That's when the negotiation happens. I think the part of the problem is, Ben, is that once I do an idea, I run fleeing from it. I don't ever want to do it again, especially if I got a positive response because I'm afraid that people will not like it as much the second time. So I feel like baseball players cussing could have been my beat. players cussing could have been my beat. I spent a whole year basically putting together an article on baseball players cussing and all the different categories of cuss words that you see. Then I just very, very deliberately never did that again. Jeff Mathis I think qualifies as a micro beat of mine. I think that maybe I can claim baseball and rap. Yeah. I haven't gone that deep into it,

but I've used rap references to litigate crucial questions of the day, like who's better, Jeter or A-Rod, and who's the coolest old white man, and who's better, Harper or Trout, and things like that. So I have mind rap lyrics as a sort of way of crowdsourcing baseball knowledge.

And then I have also done rap team, you know, like fans rapping about their teams. Yeah. I went way too deep into that. I think that team ways the cardinal way i think i i think i get that one can i claim asking someone to lip read something oh dude that well the thing that you could except it got taken from you like you got that got poached yeah it should be yours in my opinion, you invented that.

That's good enough. That's all I want. I want the invention. I was never happy it got poached. Yeah. One of yours that we haven't said that is a good one is sort of bad GM predictions. Okay. Yeah, that's true.

Because you do that every year. You go back and look at the predictions that GMs made about themselves. Although you also do the Jerry Krasnick version of that. I know, but yours is so much better. Yours is much more specific. All right. All right. We both invented doing a daily podcast about baseball.

I was just thinking that. That's absolutely true. That's a terrible idea. Yeah. All right. Okay. Eric in Millbrae. Oh, by the way yeah uh even though this is even though we've decided

that bad fake trades is your microbeat do you remember the piece that i did on the tigers fan who uh laid out the entire off season oh yeah in a in an espionage comment Right. And it involved getting like 35 players and winning 129 games. And he had stats for everybody. And I wrote an entire like alternate history of the universe in like nine parts. Yeah. All in one article, but like nine parts within this article imagining this universe. Wow, that was so much work. That was probably the most work i've ever spent on

an article and it died yeah there's some really depressing ones like that you just spend days on something and then no one reads it all right eric and milbray based on your andrelton simmons play in deck segment in episode 769 what if if the Angels batted someone else for Simmons in the first inning in road games and then subbed Simmons in for the bottom half of the inning and the remainder of the game? This would essentially replace 81 first inning at-bats from Simmons over the course of a year with a presumably better hitter, and there would be no lost defensive opportunity. There are obvious drawbacks, losing a bench player in the first inning, carrying a good hitter for only one at-bat per game, batting Simmons at the top of the order

for the rest of the game, the effect on Simmons's confidence. But do you think the potential benefit of those 81 at bats might ever be worthwhile? And if you were to pursue this strategy, would you bat the Simmons caddy first on the off chance that the caddy gets two first inning at bats in a big inning, or third? Did you listen to sports talk radio when you were a kid? Yeah. Do you remember having a specific caller who you heard a lot or who you recognized immediately or who was like a caller that seemed smart? Yeah, well, I listened to WFAN, so there were famous callers on that station. Oh, were there?

I didn't really have a one who was specific to me but I listened to um uh sports phone 68 every night and in sixth grade seventh grade and uh the the the best caller the caller that the host loved the most and that I always like to hear was named Mark in Millbrae and when I just heard Eric in Millbrae I just had this like like flood of emotion that I have. This is a career. I've made a career out of this. Did you have that the first time we recorded this episode?

No, I didn't. Wow, all right. An epiphany. So I think that the objections that he notes in his parenthetical are the exact right objections, and particularly that you're now stuck with presumably your worst hitter although as you noted all right i can't do it sorry i can't as you noted the real problem with this premise is that anderton simmons is not that bad a hitter

like you're not likely to have a bench hitter who's so much better than anderson simmons that you need to go through all these machinations to get that one extra bat anderson simmons is like an average hitting shortstop like every team has an anderson simmons at most teams have a someone worse than anderson simmons wearing catcher's gear and some have players worse than anderson simmons playing first base because the year went completely south on them so simmons is not really like you would need this to be like you know brendan ryan uh in his very worst year and slash very best defensive year or something like that for this but even granting that premise i think that the problem is that the worse you make the hitter the less you want that guy batting third for the rest of the game because the guy who bats third is going to have a lot more runners coming up in front of him.

And he, if he gets on base, he's a lot more likely to score because the guys behind him can hit. And so if you're giving away that, uh, that, uh, spot in the lineup, you're really like you're hurting yourself. And presumably somebody could do the math and confirm that this is true. Maybe it's not, maybe there is some math to it that would justify it. But my guess is that there's not. I think that you would have to bat him second, probably,

because if you bat him third, then you're too likely to end up having your pinch hitter batting with two out and nobody on, which isn't really a very important situation anyway. two out and nobody on, which isn't really a very important situation anyway. I do think, though, that the idea of the defensive replacement, which I like, I think that the defensive replacement is good. I think that teams probably are a little too rigid with when that defensive replacement comes in. It's usually like the seventh. It's generally like, you know, you have the lead and your offensive guy gets his last at bat and then you move him out, and that's a good time to do it. But I could see it being sort of a sliding scale where depending

on the situation and depending on the relative offensive and defensive merits of the guy you're replacing and the guy you're putting in, I could see it being the case where you would do it regularly after the second at bat that the guy has doing it and the third or fourth. I don't think there's necessarily any reason that there's only one way a defensive replacement fits yeah the average nl shortstop last season had a 253 true average if you're not familiar with true average it's bp's all-in-one offensive stat. 260 is league average for all positions. So NL Shortstops had a 253 true average last year. Angleton Simmons had a 248 true average.

So his true average was, you know, just a few points below the average for his position. So he's not so bad. He's not a pitcher. You don't need to do something extraordinary to replace him. And that's without even considering the effect on Simmons's confidence, which Eric mentions. He's 26. You still hope he might have some room for offensive growth. He's under team control for several years. Obviously, it's not a great message of confidence if you're going way out of your way To get rid of one Simmons at bat In a game So all these things taken together

Good reason not to do this And I think Eric's aware of that I do too If you're listing that many drawbacks To the idea you're proposing I think you are aware But it's a fun hypothetical anyway Unique pitching lines, Ben

Oh yeah, that's one of yours That was fun I think you are aware, but it's a fun hypothetical anyway. Unique pitching lines, Ben. Oh, yeah. That's one of yours. Yeah. Huh. That was fun. That was a lot of work. Yeah. Do you remember how stupid you thought I was for doing that every week?

Well, I thought you were particularly stupid because you would write it in the CMS of the website instead of a Word document. And occasionally you would just lose one. Lose everything, yeah. And have to redo it, which is kind of a Word document. And occasionally you would just lose one. Lose everything, yeah. And have to redo it, which is kind of like this podcast. Yeah, but I would, yeah, I was every day, I was running every start, every pitching line through Play Index. Every single one, every day through Play Index. I really enjoyed that, though.

It was endlessly surprising to me. It was, right? There were so many unique pitching lines. Me too. I really liked it too. Alright. Okay, question from Jamie. One topic which has come up repeatedly in your first forays into

hot stove analysis this offseason has been moral hazard. In discussions of the Simmons and Kimbrell trades, we've been thinking repeatedly about how the incentives of the GM or other central decision maker do not align with the long-term incentives of the GM or other central decision maker do not align with the long-term incentives of the club. It seems like this topic comes up extensively every offseason and at every trade deadline. You guys discussed that the Braves or Angels front office

is probably not going to be eager to engage in a teardown if it means they'll get fired halfway through it compared to if they've been freshly hired. People try to keep their jobs not to maximize utility or dollars for their employers. It seems like, fundamentally, this is a problem of bad management by ownership. By applying arbitrary standards to GMs, make the playoffs next year or I'll fire you, they encourage short-term thinking. Can this be solved, at least partially? Could GMs be given contracts with bonuses for long-term wins? Would GMs make substantially different decisions if they would get money for each game their team wins

10 years after their contract ends? This is a problem not unique to sports. It's without a doubt worse in politics. But I'm interested to see what you guys think and if you know of any more extensive research or writing applying the concept of moral hazard to baseball. It is so much worse in politics and there's nothing close to a solution to it. You would think it would be better in politics, I guess, because theoretically there's some

sort of party tribalism and you would have some lingering effects to bad decisions if your party could be tied to these things 30 years later, but that doesn't even seem to be the case. Politics just seems to be a mess. Okay. Ben, I want to ask you first about one particular part of this email where he suggests, and before we get to the merits or the fairness or the efficacy of this idea, when he suggests potentially paying GMs, even after they're gone, based on the number of wins that their team got, they're basically having bonuses that are determined years after the year that you actually performed the job.

I like that idea a lot, like as a concept and as something to think about. And I'm curious, what do you think would be a fair way of divvying up the value for wins in the future so like do you know what i mean like if you had like say you got fired this year year x and next year is x plus one and then you know obviously three years would be x plus three and then x plus five what percentage credit would you give to the gm in year x assuming he got fired or quit or whatever uh went to another team anything uh what credit what percentage credit would you give him for wins in those years in general like without knowing who the next gm is and whether he comes in and prellers everything just in general what would you guess yeah i think it's indisputable that the old gm the former gm

has more of a fingerprint on the roster in the year after he leaves than the gm who replaces him because most of the roster is going to be players he signed or traded for or developed and the whole farm system you know depending on how long he's developed. And the whole farm system, you know, depending on how long he's been in place, the whole farm system is a product of his tenure. And the new GM gets to use that farm system, gets to call up those prospects, get to use those prospects as trade chips. So definitely for at least a year, the old GM has more responsibility for the team that you see than the new GM. So I'd say something like 60% gets, you know, attributed to the old GM and the new GM has to do important things too. He has to supplement, he has to keep everyone happy,

and he has to hire a new front office. So it's not like he just comes in and does nothing. But the old GM still gets a big chunk of it. And that goes at least a few years into the future because we hear all the time about teams that do well. And then someone brings up the fact that a lot of their prominent players came from the former regime. So we heard that with the Mets this year, where some players were Omar Minaya products, and we heard that with the Astros, and many players were Ed Wade prospects. Even if those GMs were maligned at the time,

like Minaya and Wade were, even if that's the case, they still have an impact that extends years into the future. So I would say something like 60% in the first year and then declining by 20% or so each year thereafter, which would mean that, you know, five years or whatever after the GM is fired, he no longer gets any credit. Yeah, it's tricky because it's hard to know. It's hard to even answer the question of how much credit you give them for individual players like for instance mania drafts uh steven matts i think he drafted steven matts

and so say steven matts comes up and produces you know x numbers of value what percentage of that goes to to mania for getting the guy and what percentage goes to the team that rehabbed him and rebuilt his prospect status and maintained him and kept him healthy and incorporated him into the big league rotation and had the pitching coaches all up and down. So even if you can divvy up the actual players themselves, you have to figure out, well, what is the deterioration of value

or of a credit that the GM gets for those players for their gets? I think that year one, I could see it even being higher than this, but I think year one is like 75%, Preller being the exception. But even DiPoto, we've heard all about how active DiPoto's offseason has been but man it's like most of the roster next year is still going to predate him and most of the guys that he brings in are available because he was able to trade guys that are from the previous regime like and that's not necessarily a great thing because the teams aren't going to be that good uh but i still feel like next year, even in the DePoto case, 75% seems very fair and maybe low. And then I would say that it goes, it drops like 25%,

so like down to 50% by year two, and then 15% every year after that. So by year five, you still get 5% of credit. And that 5% of credit seems about right for Ed Wade and Omar Minaya, who, by the way, if you put their names together, Minayad, almost like maligned. Almost. Almost. I had a long time to think about that, too, by the way. Not since the first recording, but I mean, while you were talking. All right. Secondly, the first recording, but I mean while you were talking. All right. Secondly, the question itself.

Is this a problem in baseball that needs a solution? I think there are times when it is definitely to the detriment of the team. So in that sense, I would think that each team would have some motivation to want to avoid it. And I would think, and I like the suggestion of paying GMs for things that happen after they're gone. But I also like from the ownership side, the idea of just always giving GMs a contract cushion. Just always extending them, always making it so that they have, say, three years left on their deal. Because if you decide that you want to change executives, you don't want them anymore, you can just eat the last two years or whatever of that contract. And GMs don't make so much that that would cripple a team.

That's basically a rounding error. And it could be much worse if you think a GM is just going to raise the system to the ground in order to compete in a single year. That's the kind of thing that could cost you might as well just give the GM job security. And the worst that happens is you just have to treat that contract as a sunk cost and pay him for a couple of years to do nothing or to work for someone else. But he can operate with the knowledge that if he wants to stay with that team, he can stay with that team. And therefore he might be more mindful of moves and how they impact the team two three four years in the future see i i don't think it's a problem for two reasons one i don't think that owners are that gullible i think that for the most part well okay so i don't think they're that gullible now you might argue that owners are always going to skew more toward win now than the GM is because we don't think that owners are quite as good at this job, right?

And so maybe they're always going to be like, win for me now. That's why this would presumably work is that you're doing what the owner wants even though it might not. But owners aren't that gullible. I would think that they're able to know. They're able to read BP articles and read or to deduce on their own that you're putting a lot of money into a team that is not really likely to win the World Series. And they also get veto power over everything. And if they think that you're not acting in good faith, or if, I guess I should they think that you're not acting in good

faith or if I guess I should say if you're not acting in faith, I would guess that they're going to see through that and there's probably a lot of people would see through that. But the other thing is that I just think that it's such a small ecosystem of GMs and GM candidates. There's only 30 jobs available. There's only a few times that many actual candidates. Everybody knows everybody. And if you did things that struck the rest of the industry as dumb, I think that would probably be more harmful to GM's personal incentives than it would be helpful in his relationship with his owner.

I mean, I guess you're saying, I guess maybe the presumption is, well, the dude's going to get fired anyway, it's a Hail Mary. But if the dude's going to get fired anyway, he's going to need another job. And you don't want to have a Hail Mary on your record necessarily. You don't want to be the guy that left your team in horrible shape on the way out the door. Although you could get hired to just be the guy who gets the team over that final hump like some managers have that reputation like teams used to hire billy martin

just kind of to go all out and win and he'd just use his pitchers mercilessly and they'd all get hurt a couple years later but the team the team would have a couple good years and then Billy Martin would wear out his welcome and get fired and the pitchers being hurt wouldn't be his problem. So you maybe could have a GM version of that, like a guy who's just known for being able to take a team that's almost there all the way there and isn't really a rebuilding kind of GM.

Yeah. I don't know if that really exists. Like, I don't know if anyone really has that reputation because no one gets hired to be GM with the understanding that it's just going to be a one year thing. Like they're generally in there for the long haul. So maybe that doesn't exist, but could have a gm who's just a fixer and he just goes from team to team and he shepherds them to the promised land do you think that we will ever see a uh that like do you ever do you think that gms will eventually be like relievers where they are all specialized and they move around from team to team a lot. Okay, let me rephrase this. Is mobility by front office staff going to be significantly different now or in 25 years than it is now? I wouldn't think so.

You have to familiarize yourself with so much when you go to a new team, and every team likes to think that it knows something that other teams don't, and therefore you don't want your people to be coming and going all the time and taking those secrets with them. So probably not. Plus, you know, you build relationships with people, and then you don't want to leave right away. Okay, how would you feel about a Play Index segment?

I would feel great. All right. So, Ben, a couple days ago I tweeted a fun fact that I found using the play index a baseball reference this is a good play index in a sense because it's it's very simple and uh it shows that you can do complicated things with play index you can also do simple things and learn a lot by doing simple things so you don't have to necessarily want to be uh figuring out uh the inner workings of it. You can just use

it to organize the world a little bit. So anyway, so first I'm going to say, I started all, whenever I say in history, in this case I'm saying 1945 on. And I don't always use 1945 on as modern baseball, but I do prefer, in this case at least, I do prefer In this case at least I do greatly prefer it to Further back in history because If you go earlier than 1945 You've got the dead ball era Which doesn't count as baseball at all Completely nonsense, not baseball

Not remotely baseball And then you have the war, World War II Which that wasn't real either That doesn't count And then you only have 20 years in between and so it feels like you have to suck in a lot of junk if you want to go further back than 1945 just to get 20 years which are already kind of borderline so in this case 1945 onward so so you're actually including 45 you're including the last warrior that's a good point that's a good point

this is why this is why it should just go 47 47 such a nice natural reason to start the new history of baseball should have done 47 i don't think it matters in this case even 47 is like you know yes there was integration but barely no i know it's not you're not really saying oh yay good everybody's playing but it makes sense as a starting point like it is there's not a better year to pick when integration happened right yeah so probably not all right so it doesn't matter in this case we we can just say i was 47 okay but all right in history the greatest season ever by war by a 19-year-old is by Bryce Harper. The greatest season in history by a 20-year-old is Mike Trout. The greatest season ever by a 21-year-old is Mike Trout.

The greatest season ever by a 22-year-old is Bryce Harper. So we've seen the best ever seasons by 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-old. And some people tweeted back like, oh, my goodness, that's amazing, and we don't even recognize it. And I feel like we do. I think that one of the nice things about the Harper and Trout stuff is that for the most part, I feel like we pretty much are enjoying this and we do recognize it. I don't know how we would recognize it more, I guess, by doing this, by doing podcasts about them more often. But anyway, they're really amazing. That's a good way of showing how amazing they are. So I got to thinking about this idea of having the record for war by a 20-year-old, which if I told my uncle that, I'd be like, oh, you know,

he has the record for the most war by a 20-year-old tomorrow night. He would not consider that a worthy stat or a worthy record. He wouldn't think that was a record. But, you know, a lot of records are kind of arbitrary. If you say he has the most home runs ever for an angel, that sounds, I mean, that's a normal record. People talk about that. They'd get a baseball card if you did that in 1988. And that's just another fairly arbitrary way of organizing the world into a smaller, more digestible unit. So I

say forget it. We're calling this a record, okay? If you have the most war ever for your age, that is a record. So I went through and looked at who had the most war for every age in history and called it a record. And then I also did a, just for the purposes of getting a little more information, I also did this for 1988 onward, so the true modern era. And I wanted to see who has the most of these records, basically, which is simple enough. So first of all, there aren't many people oh one last thing one last detail i only went to age 42 because basically once you get to 43 i thought about it but like carlton fisk has the record and mariano rivera is 15th as a hitter because he didn't because

he didn't bat so he's just at zero and then that's it like he's 15's 15. And, like, at age 44, Roger Clemens is fifth because he had two at bats. So I figure that's not good. So sorry, Carlton Fisk. You're out. Okay? So from age 19 to age 42, though, five guys did it once. Five guys have one of these records. Robin Yount, Cal Ripken Jr., Joe Morgan, Ted Williams,

Luke Appling. Three guys have two, Harper Trout and Jastrzemski. Mantle has three, Bonds has four, and Mays has six. So already you've noticed that very few people qualify for this record. There are only 10 people in history, 11 people in history who have done this even once. There are only three people in history who have done it more than Harper or Trout did. It is an incredible achievement to have done this. It is not something to, I would say, to overlook the sort of signature of greatness that this represents. If you do since 1988 instead, then Fisk does get in at age 42. Others with one are Dave Winfield, Larry Walker, Lonnie Smith, Sammy Sosa, Cal Ripken,

Albert Poole's A-Rod, and then two-timers are Griffey and Harper. Trout is a three-timer because he also, in post-88, has the most at age 23. And then Bonds has eight. Bonds basically has almost as much as everybody else combined. Now, Lonnie Smith sneaks in, so that slightly degrades the achievement a little bit. But, you know, Lonnie Smith, one sort of one freak out liar season out of all the names I listed, and pretty much everybody else I listed is either a Hall of Famer or would be a Hall of Famer but for the whole thing with the thing and or their Lonnie Smith so or their borderline like Larry Walker yeah so it's a pretty good accomplishment now a few things that I would like to note about this one Barry Bonds is first at age 36 age 37 and 39 which is cool but at age 36 he's 4.6 wins

higher than number two he is essentially a mvp candidate better than the next best 36 year old in history at age 37 4.2 wins better than anybody else. And not just since 88, ever in history. And at age 39, he's 4.7 wins better than anybody else. And this is when somebody emails me. You know why, right? But nonetheless, it is true that he did this. So Barry Bonds, awesome stuff. Another Barry Bonds fun fact for the show's catalog.

Willie Mays, of course, also amazing. Made me appreciate Willie Mays just a little bit more, I think. And one of the things that I really like about Willie Mays, and really Bonds too, the two guys who are the champions of this record, is that Mays, it's not like Mays was amazing for nine years. Like Mays, he accomplished this at age 23 for the first time. He accomplished this at age 40 for the last time. It really puts into perspective that some of these, the true great careers are really long and they're really great for a really long time.

When you think about Harper and Trout and whether they... I think it's fair to put Trout in the Willie Mays conversation. I don't apologize for that. I Harper and Trout and whether they, you know, I think it's fair to put Trout in the Willie Mays conversation. Like, I don't apologize for that. I think Mike Trout and Willie Mays are in the same conversation. Mike Trout might, you know, he might roll his knee tomorrow and never be good again. And I am already comfortable saying he's one of the 25, 20 greatest players of all time and maybe more because of what he's done. one of the 25, 20 greatest players of all time, and maybe more, because of what he's done. And whether he adds to it or not, he is, present tense, he is, present tense, one of the 20 or 25 greatest players of all time, and probably a lot better than that. So no reason to think that

Trout or Harper can't be this good, or essentially be this great, to have a career that is as great as it is that lasts another 20 years. And that's really exciting to me because I think they're amazing young players and I'm excited by them and we tend to fetishize young players and that's all awesome. But the idea that 20 years from now, those guys are still going to be a huge part of my life and could still be all-stars, could still be historically great for their age, that almost nothing is impossible for them. They could be, either one of them could be the greatest player of all time.

Like that's conceivable and that's really cool. And so seeing how long Willie Mays was this great, seeing how long Barry Bonds was this great, and of course undercut by the fact that, you know, like Mickey Mantles are all in his 20s and then you never hear from him again. And Griffey's, you never hear from him again and all that. But the sort of promise that some guys do it for 20 years and not just hang around but are amazing for 20 years is very cool. I like that. The last thing is that I do think that this undersells the – just me telling you all this hasn't quite gotten to how great Trout and Harper's accomplishments in this specific regard are. If you look at it, kind of the way it breaks down is other than Harper and Trout, the way it breaks down is that all the record holders for the sort of younger ages, like into the early mid-30s, are all old guys. The only one of these guys, one of these years where somebody modern, post-88, holds the record is Cal Ripken Jr., who at age 30 had his year. Robin Yount was pre-88, but also relatively modern uh and he was to age 26 everybody else is

basically in the 50s or the 60s and then the old guys uh are the ones where the modern players are are there and really if you look at it even not just bonds it's not just bonds but if you look at the guys after bonds there's a lot more new guys, modern guys, near the top of those lists than there are near the top of the age 26, 25, 24 lists. It makes sense that you would see modern players at the top of the old player lists, partly because of steroids, partly because of better conditioning and that these guys just can stay healthier longer. They're in better shape. Their careers go longer. And there's all sorts of ways that they have an advantage over their four decades ago counterparts. But they don't have that advantage.

Like it is really hard. And I'll just say it's really hard to knock off a guy from the 60s on one of these lists. I mean, we're talking about guys like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle who are putting up 11 and 12 win seasons. And there's essentially almost no real precedent since Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for somebody who could challenge for these spots and could have the highest marks here. So the fact that Trout and Harper

have not just already collected two of these records each, which is amazing on its own, but have arguably collected two records that are much more impressive than if they had been, say, age 36 and age 39, seems also telling to me. Like, they essentially have... Like, we already know they've done more

than anybody has ever done. That is already, like, by already know they've done more than anybody has ever done. That is already, like, by, that's a tautology. But that they could do more than anybody else has ever done is itself an extra special accomplishment because, I don't know, it's hard to explain. But, you know, do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, well, there is the Stephen Jay Gould theory of why no one has hit 400 in many decades. Obviously, there are many reasons for that. But his theory was that as the talent level of the league increases, it becomes harder and harder to separate yourself from the pack because maybe the best players are no better than the absolute best players of previous eras. are no better than the absolute best players of previous eras. But the worst players are better and the medium players are better. And everyone's kind of clustered more closely toward the rightmost edge of what it's possible for humans to accomplish athletically. And so the fact that Harper and Trout stand out relative to all of the 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 year olds of all of baseball history

is particularly really impressive given that they are playing against guys of this era who are just generally better than players in previous eras and therefore it should be harder to separate yourself by the amount that they have so even more impressive not that we needed ways to convey how impressive they are and one other thing about the Lonnie Smith season that was 1989 his age 33 season 8.8 war which is somewhat surprisingly low for the best age 33 season since 1988, but that's what it was. And it was the best season in the National League by war that year. And he finished 11th in NL MVP voting, which sort of puts into perspective how much better award voting is now. And the award vote that year wasn't awful. The first and second place finishers were two giants, Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark.

And they both had excellent seasons. Will Clark was, you know, two-tenths of a win worse than Lonnie Smith. And I wouldn't necessarily say that Lonnie Smith should have won. A lot of that was defense. And maybe he didn't deserve to win. But he finished behind Pedro Guerrero, who finished third with 1.9 war. Eric Davis finished ninth with 2.9 war. Mitch Williams finished 10th with 2.4 war.

Tony Gwynn finished eighth with 2.5 war. So he was 11th behind lots of guys who were nowhere near as good as he was. He led the league in on-base percentage that year. So while some people might question whether Josh Donaldson really should have won the award over Mike Trout this year, I probably would have voted for Trout if I had had a vote. But you're arguing between the first and second best guys now, people who are very comparable, as opposed to the 11th place guy leading the league in war that doesn't happen anymore will clark should absolutely have won that award and as a kid and

a giants fan in 1989 it never would have crossed my mind that he should have like it was it was 100 obvious that kevin mitchell was the mvp like it would have been twice as many home runs as will clark that year yeah it would have been laughable To suggest to me that it should have been Will Clark over Kevin Mitchell But it absolutely should have been Will Clark Over Kevin Mitchell, it doesn't even seem that controversial Alright

Last question from Doug in Berkeley Building off your discussion of Vernon Wells and his contract You'd think that agents would be highly motivated To create a good contract outcome beyond the dollar amount simply because their players and the narratives they create are the most powerful tools for recruiting more clients. Assuming agents want to get the most money possible, I would offer that money is merely the base of the pyramid in Maslow's hierarchy of player needs, and that as you move up, you'd find things like happiness,

comfort, winning, etc. Building upward, you'd think that they'd try to assess some aspects of a player's fit in the various clubhouses and rosters, American vs. National League, clubhouse culture, number of good guys on a team's roster, reputation of the manager and coaching staff, fanbase, etc. There are only 30 teams and probably a much smaller subset relevant to any given player, so I'm not sure if they'd need to create scores, models, or tools for this, but it seems to me that there are enough indicators of fit that agents would try to be somewhat methodical in matching player needs with franchise situations. I don't really know how to put this, but I feel like what you really want is for the guy to think that he made the decision that's going to make him happy. Like you – if he goes there and he thinks that it's going to make him happy, then I think that it will probably make him happy. Now, things can change.

He might be bad and get booed. But if he thinks that it's going to be the right decision, it will more likely turn into the right decision. And if he goes there kind of kicking and screaming, or he just went for the money and he's not sure what he thinks, then he's probably going to be a little less likely. So he's going to find problems. He's going to, whatever position he holds, he's going to find evidence to justify that position. So I think that it is not so much that you should have a hierarchy of needs a chart a math to tell him what he wants uh i think that you should basically say so uh you know where do you where do you want to go like i would just sort of want to have a guy who like a counselor talk to him for like a half hour and give him some open-ended questions but instead of taking those opening questions and saying okay you're gonna be a veterinarian you say so after all this what do you think like what appeals to you and then i would put that team

near the top of the list now you know that team might not give you the money that you want that team might not like you it might hate you you might be at the bottom of their list. But that is what I would bump up. And I feel like most people sort of intuit what they want in a situation. I certainly feel like if I were a free agent, I would have a handful of teams that I would want to go to more just because of where they play. There are certain geographies. There are certain regions that I would rather live in. I would rather live in San Francisco or Oakland than in Texas or Minnesota partly for weather reasons, partly for familiarity reasons, partly because I like the culture, hugely because I like the food, partly because I like the freeways or don't like the freeways or whatever,

like traffic might be a factor. But I just feel like I sort of already know those things. And it surprises me that maybe, I don't know, you very rarely hear about a guy in baseball who goes, unless it's his hometown you you hear that sometimes but unless it's hometown you very rarely hear a guy say you know i just really like kansas city like i i just like it like i like i like the wide open spaces i just like it it's a nice place to visit i thought i'd like to live there maybe they do but you never really hear about it and i'm sort of surprised i mean mean, if it were me,

if I were a free agent, I think I would basically tell my agent, I'd like to live in New York, Northern California or Seattle. So see which of those will get me the most money. And unless it's something absurdly low, sign the deal. Yeah, I think that once you are a pro baseball player, where you work in the city that you work in, which is a very important consideration for you or for me or most people listening to this, is less important. Because A, you are in a job where for half the year or a month of the year you're in Florida or Arizona in spring training. And five or six months of the year you're not home half the in spring training, and five or six months of the year you're not home half the time, you're on the road, and then the other half-ish of the year you can be wherever you want. So you can continue to live wherever you've been living. You don't have to settle in that city where you play. And the things that make a city appealing to us,

play. And the things that make a city appealing to us, like, you know, good schools or good restaurants or nice neighborhoods, a lot of those things, once you are mega rich, you can afford to send your kids to the best schools. Like, it doesn't matter where you are. There's going to be a good school and you can send your kids there and you can eat at the best restaurants and wherever you are, there's going to be a few good restaurants and you're going to live in a nice neighborhood and a nice house and you'll have all the luxuries, no matter what city you're in. So I think if you're in this strange job that few people have and that we have never had and can't totally understand, I think it would be less of an issue. And I think if someone's offering you many millions more dollars, it would be a hard thing to turn down because, you know, the weather's not quite to

your liking or you don't love the scenery. It seems like it would be a tough thing to make your decision based on that. And if you're making it based on the team and who else is on the team and who the manager is and is it a winning team, if you're signing a long-term contract, all of those things are liable to change over the life of your contract. So you might go to a team thinking it's a winner and suddenly it's not a winner. We talked about that with the Braves and all the extensions they signed recently and so those things can change quickly and the only thing that doesn't really change is the money and if you're the agent well that'd be the climate the climate doesn't change like I do can we agree that it's weird that so many people sign

to play in Texas just because all we hear is how miserable it is playing in Texas in the summer. And you get to choose. Just outed yourself as a climate change denier. The climate doesn't change. All right. Fair enough. No, but really, all we hear is, even from the Rangers, is how miserable it is playing in Texas in the summer. And if you're a free agent and you get to choose, like, there's great things about Texas.

There's great things about Dallas-Fort Worth. But, like, you know you have a physical reaction to playing there. So why not just not play there? Like, good for Texas that people don't do this. But isn't it sort of surprising that there aren't more free agents who just go anywhere but Texas, bro? Yeah, it is. I guess we wouldn't necessarily know if that happened. You probably would have heard by now. Yeah. You hear about all sorts of other things. Yeah, you hear about pitchers and Colorado and hitters and Petco. So maybe. And so

I don't know. But Doug was saying that, you know, your powerful recruiting tool for an agent would be for your players to be happy. But I think probably the more powerful recruiting tool is for your players to make the most money and to be able to point to record contracts or say that your clients make more dollars per war than the other guy's client or however you want to spend that and for new clients that you're trying to attract that maybe haven't had their big deal yet they don't know what it's like to have a hundred million dollars and maybe when you have a hundred million dollars it's not that different to have 120 million dollars but if you never had any

million dollars then it seems like it would be pretty important. And so you're going to want to go to the agent who gets his clients the most money. And maybe in retrospect, you would regret signing a deal in a certain place. but he doesn't really get a percentage of your satisfaction or your happiness other than the fact that maybe it'll be less work for him if you're happy and you're not demanding a trade or something of that nature so i think for an agent i would probably just try to get my client the most money and you know i would care about my clients and hope that they were happy too but i think that often they would think that the money would make them happier. Even though we know that once you are able to satisfy your basic needs, most people tend to have the same level of happiness, even if they're just, you know, middle class or super

upper class. Everyone has concerns that are appropriate to their income. Yeah. If I were an agent, I would just tell the guy, oh, well, you're not going to be happy, you're human. So I want to push back on one thing that you said that's frivolous, and then I want to synthesize my previous statements, and then maybe we can end. The food is not the same, Ben. You could find a couple good restaurants,

but you can't get Vietnamese food that food that is good in you know 15 or 20 major league cities you can't get a ripe tomato in 20 major league cities you can't get a tortilla a good tortilla in 20 major league cities now i know the world is shrinking impossible i can't no you cannot you can't get a good tortilla in New York. That's impossible. Not even close. I mean, how can there, the city-specific food snobbishness, I don't buy it. It's true, Ben. In general, New York pizza might be better than anywhere else's pizza, but you could

go to a big city and get a decent slice of pizza. Any big city. Sure, you could. I agree you could get it. I'm not worried about not having New York style pizza. I'm saying that the food supply does not,

the growing of food does not support certain things and the particularly ethnic enclaves produce culture and competition among restaurants that make it plausible to have good Vietnamese food in Orange County or San Jose, but not Milwaukee. You're not getting good Vietnamese in Milwaukee. It's never happening. And no matter how rich you are, it's not happening. And if you like

Vietnamese food a lot, and I mean, now I will say that like five years ago, you couldn't get an avocado in most of the country, the good avocado in a lot of the country, and maybe 10 years ago. And now you can't. And because Trader Joe's makes everything possible. So Trader Joe's has made the country much flatter food wise if you're cooking for yourself. But there are still definitely things that the region matters you can't get fresh seafood in a lot of places and if you if it's not fresh seafood's not

very good so like there's not really a way around that yeah that's true and you care about fruit freshness more than anyone i know so i well that's a huge i mean that's a big reason that i would want to say in northern california because it is true that's a huge, I mean, that's a big reason that I would want to stay in Northern California because it is true that there is no good fruit. There's essentially no good fruit anywhere in the world anymore or anywhere in the country anymore. It's almost impossible to get real fruit, to get good fruit. And even farmer's markets are only getting you

about two-thirds of the way there these days. You really have to source it even better than that. And it's very hard to do and it takes a lot of work. And I can't really afford to do it but if i were rich i would be eating some fresh fruit man if i lived in a place where i could get it and so that is significant but to be somewhat more serious for a moment i don't think that we have any way of knowing what makes 200 millionaires happy i don't think we have any way of knowing whether $30 million registers at all to them or if it just goes straight into their bank account and they never touch it. I don't think we know whether bond me sandwiches make them happy or if the

ability to buy whatever they want and do whatever they want makes it irrelevant. I don't know if bond me sandwiches make me happy. I don't know what makes me happy, but I really don't know what makes a 200 millionaire happy. So probably the correct answer is an agent could distinguish himself to some degree and also service clients to some degree at a very low investment by having on staff a happiness expert, a person who is trained in the academics of happiness and could actually at least provide some data and a reasonable way of thinking about these decisions and framing these decisions. And probably at the end of it, you're going to go where it pays you the most money. But it would be nice for an agent to have a person who

is more of an expert than you and I on these issues and more of an expert than anybody without a you know psychology degree is on any of these issues uh and that does seem like a good advice for a large agency all right well i'm reading yelp reviews of vietnamese restaurants in milwaukee so i guess we can end this now some of them have really good reviews but i guess milwaukee people just don't know what they're missing so they can't they aren't qualified to judge they're like us trying to imagine what it's like to have 200 million dollars look up ethiopian food in denver but anywhere you're gonna go like there's gonna be an et Ethiopian person in that place who wants to make food from. Yeah, but.

So why can't that person make an Ethiopian food? Ben, I, this, here's the thing. I don't want to, I don't want to use this, but I, you're leaving me no choice. The market diner wasn't good, Ben. The food wasn't good. Like, you've got a problem. You don't have taste buds i don't know i don't know it's a global society i have faith in the vietnamese community of milwaukee i might be i might be

overstating the difficulty of getting an avocado 10 years ago. It's a hypothesis I have that I talked, I have some good friends who are big avocado eaters. They're vegetarian and they're health nuts. And they, so, you know, avocado is going to be a huge part of their diet. And they moved out to Manhattan 10 years ago. They lived there for five years and then they moved back out here and then they just moved back a year ago. And we were talking about the, uh, about my hypothesis that, that Trader Joe's has made avocados available in a way that they didn't used to be. And they thought about it and without total certainty but with general confidence agreed that when they came out, it was hard to get avocados and that now it is easy to get avocados.

So I might be wrong. Save your emails. Okay. All right. But you can send emails about other subjects at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. We thank you for listening.

You can thank us for doing this podcast by continuing to listen and rating and reviewing and subscribing to the show on iTunes. We're approaching our 600th rating, so you could push us over that threshold. And you can also support the show by supporting our sponsor, The Play Index, going to baseballreference.com, using the coupon code BP, and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. That's it for us this week. We are sadly skipping right over, ending the week on a multiple of five, but we hope that you had a

fun Thanksgiving break. We will talk to you next week.