Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 788: The Deepest Mailbag Dive

Episode Date: December 28, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about player privacy concerns, then dig (very) deep into the mailbag for questions that time forgot.

🎵 me Good morning and welcome to episode 788 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? All right. Daily, because the only day of the week is Monday. Who does a baseball podcast between Christmas and New Year's? What kind of misguided people? No, I think we've pretty much set the record for most podcasts between Christmas and New Year's already.

We're doing good. Yeah, right. Well, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Good. How's's the annual coming i don't know but oh that's right i'm doing that you yes i'm doing that it's going well i'm doing that too yeah stupid idea is it done it's pretty close the comments are all done the essays are all done the fungos are all done front and back of the book is all done it needs to be we'll all proof it one more time once we get the pdf and the top 101 has to be done and i think that's it i think there might be there might be two essays that

are having finishing touches put on them good so pretty much done it's always a fun day when you get the pds and you have to read the whole book in a day or two for me you mean not for you not for anyone else although last year you did uh why i don't know why but last year we sent it yeah we sent it to you for some reason you never touch the annual because you're smart and last year we sent it to you and you opened it and i sent it to you in like 40 seconds later I got an email saying table of contents. What was it? It was baseball with one L in the table of contents. Let me find it.

Yes, the table of contents said Patoka leaderboards. Patoka. Good times. the table of contents said patoka leaderboards patoka yeah good times yeah also baseball prospectus had one else that was it yeah there you go both no uh you told me only tell you something if it was worth mentioning and i said it said patoka and you said well this is worth. What was the date on that? January 9th. Okay. Wow. Interesting.

Because we basically have it out the door by then. So yeah, that was after we had already reviewed it. Yeah. But we don't review. See, like the table of contents, we have nothing to do with. And we just, by that point, we're so exhausted that we, like, I guess we look at it, but do we really? You need fresh eyes. Yeah, exactly.

And so that was a little bit of a panic moment. Well, feel free to send me the leaderboards and the table of contents again. again i was a little i was still great i was a little disappointed that in your hour long review of the entire 600 000 page book you didn't notice that we left out jacob turner i didn't notice that you were way too low on the royals okay that's a good one great one all right um so i do you have any uh anything to talk about? Goodness, no. All right. So I have a question for you, Ben. Okay.

What if some stat head team was able to figure out by looking at the numbers and so on that players' birth weight was predictive of their careers? Okay. So they found out that if you're born under six pounds you're likely to underperform your draft slot if you're born under four pounds you're especially likely to if you're born you know between seven and eight you're gonna be golden and i don't know maybe there's a point at the top where it starts to be bad too if a team started asking players for their birth weights

would there be a backlash is there any point where we finally say enough is enough you're not allowed to judge babies i don't think birth weights would be it oh god i think people would fork over the birth weights oh my gosh i'm trying to figure out any complete dna sequencing might be a minor hurdle why we get to that point why why that that seems more central to your identity what if teams look and find out that you're gonna have a an illness in the next 20 years. Like if your UCL is slightly abnormal, for instance, just a little smaller than normal. Yeah. There's got to be some point where we recognize that all these teams are acting rationally

and appropriately for the demands of their bosses. And we just say, but we don't like it. And so we're going to set limits on what you can ask for right what prompted this i don't know i was just thinking about it yeah i was thinking about a baby i was thinking about a poor little baby born three pounds and some baseball team is like not drafting him looking at this baby looking at this tiny little baby in his tiny little incubator and saying not touching him. And it made me mad.

Yeah, maybe if teams ask for phrenological information, want to measure the shape of your head, maybe that would be a problem. I don't know. I would think that by the time you get to the draft, the differences in birth weight don't matter anymore yeah i mean well i'm not suggesting that they do well i think the players would also think that it's a thought experiment though i'm trying to figure out if there's any point where we say that teams uh teams acting in their own good interest is unacceptable

because you know look hey we all believe in capitalism we all believe in the free market but we don't believe that you should be able to most of us some of us do but most of us don't believe you should be able to dump your toxins in the river or pay a dollar 45 an hour we believe in some places where uh the you know a governing body should be able to tell you that the free market does not serve teams can act in ways that we find tacky distasteful uh uncompetitive uh in order to serve their own team's competitive drive and uh and i just as the year ends i'm kind of just wondering whether there is a point whether they're where the line is and that's why i was thinking about babies because everybody loves babies we're all we're all fans of babies but not only do we love babies ben but i dare say we all love small babies

especially i don't know if i really am pro babies given given those babies we like our own babies give you don't you wish nothing but the best for babies. Sure. You don't care to be around them. Right. But you do wish the best for babies. Yes. And. I hope that they grow up and become something other than babies. Yeah, ballplayers.

Yeah. Yeah, and so I'm trying to, I don't know, I was just wondering if maybe that was the line. I'm trying to find the exact line where somebody would step in and say, no, Chris Bryant has to be on the opening day roster. Well, this has been an issue more so in other sports probably than baseball. There was an ESPN The Mag article about a year ago by Pablo Torre and Tom Haberstroh about biometric testing in the NBA and the movement to track everything that players do both on the field or on the court but also off and tracking their sleep habits and their workout habits and all that

one of their lines from it was the literary specter haunting sports burgeoning information age is no longer Michael Lewis and Moneyball but George Orwell at 1984. Boom. Yeah, there it is. There it is. I don't think they mentioned birth weight, but lots of other things that the teams tell the players it's kind of in their interest to share this information. And maybe it is if they're very diligent about it, or if they could get better in some way, there are ways in which it might benefit the player. But it's also sort of scary because there are ways in which it might benefit the player, but it's also sort of scary because there are ways in which it could be used against the player and it's sort of a privacy concern. So I don't know that that's come up as much in baseball, at least not publicly

really, but it will soon if it hasn't yet. Do you think that, so right now as it is, teams draft a player and either before, to some degree before they have questionnaires, and to some degree after they make them fill out, you know, they make them do physicals and have MRIs. They essentially require players, 17-year-old kids, sometimes 18, sometimes 22. They're not all 17, but they require these kids who have a little money and little leverage to give them all their medical information. And this feels like a little bit of an imbalance of power for sure. And I wonder whether, do you think that these teams have a right to this information? Or if say Scott Boris know, say there was a year where Scott Boris had, you know,

11 of the top 30 prospects, or maybe Scott Boris and four other agents decide to band together and they have 17 of the top 40 prospects, and they all say, forget it. You guys don't have a right to that. Do you think that they do have a right to that? Would you consider that to be too far on the agent's part to refuse this information? Yeah, I think you could. Whoa, you would. You could to refuse this information yeah i think you could whoa you would

refuse it oh you think you could okay so not too far it might hurt your client though well clearly the reason that clearly the reason that they do it right now is because they think that it would hurt them if they refuse that it would be if they were one out of you know 2 000 draftees and one out of 30 first rounders to refuse it then it would hurt them however i do wonder whether they will figure out a way i mean it's tricky because they're all competing with each other for finite uh draft bonus dollars and they're all competing you know with each other you know they're at best they're independent of each other but at you know at worst they're literally competing with each other for money however i do wonder whether there's a point where they figure out a way to essentially tell teams no

we don't you get to look at us you get to spend a year watching us play baseball you do not get to put uh dyes in our bloodstream and see what it shows up. You know, you don't, the, you know, the, you know, McPhail didn't get to in 1960 and you don't get to in 2015. And you just look, use your eyes, use your scouting bureau. You do not get to use doctors, you know, to probe us. And I think personally, I would feel better about that. Well, it's, if they could unionize somehow, that would be easier, but obviously they're not members of the union. feel better about that? Well, if they could unionize somehow, that would be easier. But

obviously, they're not members of the union. You would think that that's something where the union would get involved with major league players if that starts to become a concern that teams are asking too much of players as far as information on their personal lives goes or their performance goes. But draftees don't have the same protections. So that would be tough because there'd always be someone who doesn't mind sharing and just wants to get drafted and he would consent to share that information. So I don't know. I mean, yeah, that's the, that's what I was going to ask. I don't know whether you would decide not to draft someone because you can't do a test that tells you if he's going to develop some disease in 15 years. Particularly for a hitter. I mean,

if pitchers, I would guess that all teams want to see how much strain, how much wear is on the UCL for pitchers. But if hitters said, no, not giving you medical information, just not doing it, If hitters said no, not giving you medical information, just not doing it, I wonder if it would matter at all. I wonder if it would matter more than 3%. I mean, Bryce Harper got – what did Bryce Harper get, like 9.9 or something? Bryce Harper, it probably wouldn't have affected him at all, right? Yeah, I wouldn't think so. So I don't know. I could see it happening.

I don't know. I guess I would guess – It's not that much money for draftees. It's different if it's a $200 million free agent. Yeah. For a draftee, even the most expensive guy is not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. So now I have to figure out why it doesn't queeze me out for free agents. Why I think that there's a distinction between those two.

Well, because they have actual agents instead of advisors who are technically. Maybe it's because they have actual agents instead of maybe because maybe it's maybe it's maybe it's because they have actual agency uh-huh they they actually somewhere to go right they're not they're not they are neither children which these are literally children but they are neither children uh nor are they um constrained by a monopoly monopolistic market suppressing mechanism that owners have agreed to against their consent no not once they get their six years of service time in yeah so maybe that's why all the same probably i should figure out a better reason for why it doesn't bother me with agent free agents other than that all right uh so then ben yeah anything to talk about yet nope all right so i wanted to ask you besides that i wanted to ask i know i didn't want to ask

you i don't want to ask you anything i don't have anything to ask you ben yeah in our time doing this podcast i have labeled 3283 emails podcast queues okay we have not answered most of them no i'm going to pick a couple without looking wow we're really getting desperate i'm just gonna i'm going way back and i'm gonna just i'm going to old ones and i'm gonna see if 4614 really why do i have more than you? I don't know. Good question. Oh, you know, I don't think I started labeling them until some point.

All right. August 27, 2014. All right. Michael, what is the point of putting a player like Matt Latos on revocable waivers when there is no way a team is going to trade them? Why subject the player to the thought that they could still be traded in the next few days golly i'm glad i'm already glad we did this because because just think like isn't it fun to be in a mental space where matt latos was seen as being something better than garbage yeah contract garbage not human garbage although we can debate uh matt latos not 15 months ago

was seen as valuable like that's crazy and that's nuts yeah like 15 months ago matt latos was so good that you would never trade him during the waiver deadline. Matt Latos! Matt Latos, who was waived mid-September and signed by the Angels, even though he wouldn't be eligible for the postseason. Matt Latos, who threw three and two-thirds innings for his last team. Matt Latos, who pitched for three teams last year, had a 78 ERA plus, and managed a whopping five innings per start.

That Matt Latos. That low birth weight came back to bite him. That's crazy. It always gets you, eventually. Dude, at this time, Matt Latos in 2014 had a 325 ERA. That is crazy. If you'd asked me to guess when this email came out i would have got it within you know a quarter of a run but if you asked me right now hey sam what was matt latos era in 2014 i would have guessed four four five like six something no in 2014 it

was three two five 14 yeah yeah it's three two five. Yeah. He was good. Yeah. Matt Latos was good when we were on episode 500 and something. That's crazy, Ben. All right. So the point of putting a player, I'm just going to take out Matt Latos. I'm just going to read this email without the extremely distracting name, Matt Latos in it. What is the point of putting a player on revocable waivers when there is no way a team is going to trade them so remind me i'm going to try to answer this i answered this a long time ago i answered this in an article once a long time ago but there are a few reasons uh one is literally to um to camouflage the guys that you do want to get through. By putting essentially every player in the league on waivers, it makes it easier to sneak guys through that you do want to get, right?

Because teams don't... So I talked to... After the Adrian Gonzalez et al trade to the Dodgers, I talked to a GM about how Adrian Gonzalez made it through. Because clearly, Adrian Gonzalez had value and was not a player who should have cleared waivers. And yet he did clear waivers. And that seemed odd to me. And so I talked to a GM and he said, well, basically, this whole thing is run by a little bit of GM unwritten rules, where you don't want to claim anybody that you don't think you're going

to actually make a trade for. Because if you start claiming every single person that you're willing to take on, then you basically are delubricating the entire system. Everybody gets mad at you. And then they start blocking your guys punitively. And then you can't do the things you want to do. So there's kind of like everybody just sort of agrees to go along with this. And so for instance, if Mike Trout were put on waivers in August, probably someone would claim him. But a lot of teams, I don't know if Mike Trout is a great example, but my understanding is that like a lot of teams wouldn't trade him because they basically would go, well, clearly the angels aren't going to trade him to us. They're putting him through for some reason, but, you know, realistically, they're not going to trade him.

They're certainly not going to trade him to us. They're especially certainly not going to give us that claim. And so you might, you know, if you see Mike Trout go on waivers and you go, oh, it's a great chance for me to get Mike Trout. You might call up, you know, Jerry DiPoto at the time or Epler and say, Hey, what do you, I mean, what are you looking for? And you know, the GM would go, yeah, I mean, you know, we're not going to trade Mike Trout or we want seven of your best pieces plus the next seven as well. And you go, well, we're not going to do that. And so then you just let them go. And so a lot of players who wouldn't clear waivers on their merits, clear waivers just because teams aren't realistically know they're not going to be able to trade for them.

And so then you put them through. The reason you put Latos through besides the camouflage factor is that there is a possibility, there is a possibility, small, but a possibility that you will end up making a trade in August involving, maybe you make a trade involving, oh, I don't know, Karl Crawford and Josh Beckett, who are salary dumps, not guys that you're going to have trouble getting through waivers, but it's harder to make a trade with just those two guys. It's much easier to make a trade

if you've previously put your entire roster through waivers and the other team has put their entire roster through waivers and now you can essentially use a whole bunch of players to fill it out. So you put Matt Latos through because maybe you're trying to get who was on the, what team was Matt Latos on? I have no idea what team he was on in 2014. The Reds? That was before the Descalfani trade, right?

Yeah. All right. So the Reds are trying to trade Brandon Phillips and they're trying to trade Homer Bailey's contract away and they want to trade him to the Dodgers and the Dodgers say, but we don't want to give up any prospects. We'll take on the money, but it's not really enough for us. Why don't you throw in Matt Latos and then we'll give you something else. And now that Matt Latos has already cleared waivers, he's's easier to include i believe that's the answer to this okay well i hope michael is still with us

16 months later let's see i hope he's very patient hang on i will see what his last let's see when michael's last email to us was if not we can just up december 7th he's still on good well there you go all right we'll we get there eventually question answered on july 8th we got a question from christian who wanted us to grade his trade and we never ever answer any go any question about a trade. Do it. A hypothetical trade we'd never answer. Do it. On July 8th, 2014, Christian asked, I send McCutcheon and Josh Beckett and get Bryce Harper and Matt Latos. 10-team categories league.

So he sends McCutcheon and who? Josh Beckett. And he got Bryce Harper and Matt Latos. So McCutcheon and who? Josh Beckett. And he got Bryce Harper and Matt Latos. So McCutcheon for Harper, basically. Basically, yeah. Should have done it. Since this trade happened, Beckett retired and Latos tanked. But Bryce Harper became the best player in baseball.

Yeah. I'd say Christian did very well. Good job. You get an A, Christian. Congratulations on your fourth place finish in the 2015 fantasy season yep all right danny february 6th 2014 hey gang some twitter folks were making jokes about freddie freeman's average annual value compared to albert pools ryan howard etc it was quickly pointed out that comparing freedman freeman's deal with his Arbier's

bought out to a deal which covers free agent years exclusively isn't quite fair. In other words, Freeman's, I wonder why we didn't answer this. Freeman's contract is more like five and 105 million dollars, making his average annual value more like something in the zone of 21 million dollars i understand this logic when comparing contracts but people are acting hang on february 4th 2014 gabe there are reports that yasiel puig might lead off for the dodgers this year don mattingly was reported saying that the thought process behind this move is to get Puig more fastballs. Traditional thinking says leadoff guys will get a plethora of fastballs to keep the lineup,

to keep the top of the lineup off the bases, to prevent the middle of the lineup from hitting with runners on. However, with a hitter like Puig, who lacks plate discipline at this point in his career and will chase balls out of the zone and doesn't handle or lay off breaking balls real well, will pitchers pitch him like a traditional leadoff guy? Do pitchers still pitch to hitters according to their place in the lineup, or will they rely on scouting reports? If in some crazy universe the Blue Jays batted Jose Bautista ninth, would pitchers still pitch to him like Jose Bautista or a nine-hole hitter? Going back back to puig if pitchers continue to try to get puig out with

breaking balls and pitches out of the zone couldn't the dodgers counter by batting someone like d gordon ninth assuming he gets on base higher than a 313 cliff to increase his chances of stealing bases off breaking balls or balls in the dirt. Thanks Gabe. Now, first of all, a plus irony on the D Gordon knock. Really, really good.

D Gordon, 20th or so best player in baseball punchline. Not that long ago. Well done, Gabe. Well done us for probably nodding and agreeing while reading this in February 2014. Dee Gordon, man. Remember how there was only one thing we knew that one night last December when the Dodgers made 45 moves and we're like, what does it all mean?

And the only thing we knew was that the Marlins were stupid. Yeah. And they killed that deal. Yeah. They got Dee Gordon. Like basically the Dodgers traded, like I know there were a lot of moves, but basically the Dodgers traded five years of Dee Gordon

for one year of Howie Kendrick. And we're like, yep, we get that. Crazy, man. Yeah. Digging into the mailbag is an exercise in remembering how little we know about baseball so the question is a good question though it is we've got a lot of good questions that we would have to do a study on it's a it's a problem no it is but it is a good question what do you think do you think that yasir puig batting first, fourth, seventh. Would there be a significant change in pitch types in those three scenarios?

We can rule out the Jose Bautista batting night. That one, no. I mean, and that's intentionally an extreme example. But no, he would pitch, I mean, they would pitch Jose Bautista essentially the same, very cautiously, no matter where he was batting. But Puig first, fourth, and seventh. How big a difference? Well, I mean, we're talking about lineup protection mostly, unless we're talking about pitchers just believing something about the player based on where he's hitting in the lineup.

So yeah, I think we're talking lineup protection. Yeah, lineup protection. It's weird. I didn't really think of it initially as lineup protection. I thought of it as like, well, you don't want him to get on base in front of better batters but i guess that's the definition of lineup protection yeah uh yeah so i i think lineup protection would have some impact on how these guys are pitched i i think the studies have shown that overall the lineup protection doesn't really matter that much but it does change the shape of your production somewhat. Like if you have a really good hitter batting behind you, you might get more fastballs, you might get more pitches to hit, and you might hit them more. But if you don't have a good

batter batting behind you and you're a good batter, then you'll get walked more instead. And it comes out about equal. I think it's about a wash. People have shown that if you don't have someone good, if you don't have protection, then you'll just walk a bunch. And walking is good too. And so you're still valuable to your team. But it would affect what your slash line looks like.

And it presumably would affect what pitch types you see and where you see them. So yeah, I think there would be some effect, even if it would not really change the overall value. Yeah, I mentioned maybe six months or so ago, my hypothesis that line of protection is actually in reverse, that protection comes from having guys on base in front of you. If you're a good hitter, rather than having good hitters behind you. on base in front of you if you're a good hitter rather than having good hitters behind you and so i guess in the sense that puig you know again this is february 2014 where puig represents great hitter

and not 730 ops hitter or whatever he had but let's assume puig is dominant hitter puig then i i guess it would affect him somewhat to have fewer runners on base in front of him. And that's, I think maybe that's a little bit of the idea behind having your best hitter bat, maybe second instead of first, or about having your ninth hitter, your position player hit ninth instead of the pitcher hit ninth is that, you know, you do want to have runners on base in front of your good hitters. And maybe part of that is that it gets him pitched a little bit more honestly. But otherwise, I would basically feel like the first pitch of the game might be a fastball like 5% more often,

and after that, it would essentially just be baseball to him. If baseball were different. Yeah. All right. just be baseball yeah to him if baseball were different yeah all right september 18th 2013 guy asks dear ben and sam i always think about this i wonder if he still always thinks about it like he's just it's two and a half years later and he has not thought of a single thing different than this yeah dear ben and sam i, by the way, Ben and Sam, these are pure Ben and Sam's before you, before you got in everybody's head and made them think

about which order. Dear Ben and Sam, I always think about this. Whenever a player fouls a ball off his body during and at bat, if pain causes an adrenaline rush in the brain and adrenaline increases focus vision strength and speed do you think it's possible that a hitter has a better chance of hitting the ball hard immediately after fouling a pitch off his foot leg or other body part assuming there is no deeper injury that could inhibit the swing is there any conceivable way of measuring this i'm assuming there is not i know you won't read this part but oh nope not gonna thank you guy for the warning all right so i i mean the the common the common belief the

conventional wisdom is the opposite that a batter who's in pain doesn't want to be in pain again and therefore you can attack him with certain pitches that he is loathe to swing at on the fear that he is going to hit a baseball in the same spot. And so this would be counter to the conventional wisdom. Yes. Yes. Now the conventional wisdom does not include the effect of adrenaline. No, it doesn't. And and there's i guess there is a way to measure that that we could ask uh tom haberstraw right about that for instance uh but i guess we just are stuck with hypotheses here uh i would guess that i mean pain geez man pain does not make me feel like a better athlete. No, it could be. Maybe it could be distracting in a good way.

If you're nervous or if you're not in the right frame of mind, maybe the pain would take your mind off the other stuff and make you think about the pain instead. There's no way to know unless we started tracking every time someone fouled a ball off himself and then saw what he did after that. How many balls would you want before you felt like you had enough to do an article about this, to do a study? Probably need like a thousand. Oh, whoa.

Okay. So a thousand. So you could probably get, I mean, I don't know what they'd ask for, but you could probably get Baseball Info Solutions to do that for you. I mean, you'd have to arrange it in advance and compensate them for their labor, but it's conceivable. Is it, it's hard to imagine why it'd be worthwhile. Yes, it is. That's probably why we didn't answer the question the first time um yeah i don't i don't know if it did benefit them would you tell players to exactly foul the ball off themselves i mean that's see that's exactly the thing like this is a situation where you might

find a result here you might find some significance here but uh you're you're almost certainly not going to find any significance that is good enough that would to change any any decision in this process like you're not probably going to tell the pitcher throw pitches that will make him foul balls off his foot you're probably not going to find uh results that make it so that the manager would see that and go oh i'm gonna pinch hit for that guy now you're probably not going to find results that make it so that the manager would see that and go, oh, I'm going to pinch hit for that guy now. You're probably not going to say, well, I don't even know what you would do. If the hitter got good, you wouldn't find enough that the pitcher would go, well, we better intentionally walk him now. Or we better have the outfielders.

I guess the closest thing is maybe you'd have the outfielders back up a step or come in a step. Yeah, maybe you could figure out. Maybe guys are slower. Maybe they're behind a little bit after they foul a ball off, so you could position your fielders differently, less likely to pull the ball or something like that. You could certainly. I mean, I think it's already safe to assume that. In fact, teams already do react to this.

They think that if a pitcher throws a sinker inside and the hitter fouls it off his knee or foot or ankle or shin or heel or whatever that bone is, is that your ankle bone? There is such a thing. Is that it? This knob, is that an ankle bone? This knob here or this one? I'm pointing at it right here.

Yeah, I can't see. If you do that, then they probably... It would be fun. Okay, I will now admit that it would actually be fun to find at least some scores of these and then look at what the next pitch is. So in fact, fine, whoever asked this, I am going to do this this year i'm at you know now that you mention it

yes i'm going to do this study not to see how the hitters do i don't think that i i think you're right it would take too many pitches and i'm not that interested but i am actually curious whether a batter that fouls a ball off of his foot ankle bone knee shin knobby thing uh does have reason to expect a pitch in a certain location on the next pitch oh so it's so mad so mad that now i have to add it hang on adding it to the list this one i'm gonna do though this one i'm gonna do i'm going to around the time the season starts i'm going to put out a call for people to let me know whenever a guy hops around in the batter's box because he's in pain i think it's your medial malleolus and that's the knob on the inside of your ankle thank you there's a lateral malleolus on the outside of your ankle

oh interesting medial foul ball off the medial malleosis. That is now on the tickler file with a whole bunch of things that I have not done. Yeah. Some of these are good. It's an interesting question because if the pitcher does come back and throw that same pitch again, so the idea behind throwing it again is that the batter is not going to want to swing at it because it just hurt him so it's like an aversion therapy sort of thing yeah or if he does swing at it then he'll be kind of like right and yet you would think that being able to predict the next pitch would be an advantage the batter exactly if you could really sit on it

i mean really at that point if the batter could just sit he'd be happy yeah but if he could sit on that pitch especially yeah it'd be good for him all right we'll find out when you all right somebody uh somebody i don't care who email me podcast at baseballpersons.com on march 27th or so reminding me that i'm gonna do this okay thank you all right uh may 4th 2014 i'm gonna go i'll do this one and then i'll go uh i'll jump into 2015 and then we'll be done eric hartman friend of the show great friend of the show i feel like the question of how an average person would do an mlb has been covered before you're right but i have a bit of a different question assuming i'm an average male and i have infinite opportunities in my current physical state

parenthetical near my physical prime though sadly ben can attest i'm nothing special how many abs would it take how many abs would it take for me to hit a home run off a league average pitcher p.s unnecessary postscript. All right. How many, you've met Eric. I haven't met Eric. So should we assume Eric is an average North American male or should we? Canadian male. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so he's an average.

Off an average major league pitcher who presumably is treating him. See this, this is always what it comes down to. Cause you know, I, I'm going to, I don't think this is going to be in the book. So I think I can just talk about this. Sean, one of our pitchers, I've always had the question I've talked about on this show of how hard it is to hit. And you know, I, I feel like there's different evidence here. The evidence on one hand is that pitchers who are in no way, absolutely no way selected for their ability to hit their athleticism. Yes. Their ability to hit. No, they all get hits. Every single one of them gets a hit in the majors against major. That's like amazing. Like when you think about it, that's an amazing thing that even knuckleballers,

it. That's an amazing thing that even knuckleballers, they all get hits off major league pitchers. That blows my mind. And they basically all do it every 40 at bats or so at the very worst. And is that right? 40? Yeah. Every 40 at bats at the very, very worst. So in that way of thinking about it, it's pretty easy to get a hit, right? Every single person can do it, right? Right. Okay. Now, the flip side is that Chris Davis struck out Adrian Gonzalez. And like he was just throwing pitches and Adrian Gonzalez was like, whoop, this is hard. So that is a way of saying that it's actually really hard. And when you look at how pitchers, how position players do when they pitch as Jeff Sullivan has documented, it's not necessarily a perfectly reliable trial but they have like an era a collective era of like seven or so which is not that bad i mean that's like you know that's shane green from april 18th on

is how good position players pitching are and they're also not so to some degree to a very small degree they're selected for their ability to pitch but basically they're usually just the scrub who's available to do it they're not pitchers and yes they throw hard because they're major leaguers but they're not doing anything and they still have an era of like seven which is amazing and so that would suggest that it's impossible to hit so i've always wondered so uh in uh stomper summer i had sean had Sean, who is one of our best pitchers, pitch to me in July and after a game. It took him about 15 pitches to get one past me. I didn't hit them hard, but I fouled them off. I hit a couple fair, maybe even a couple into

the outfield. I took some pitches that were out of the zone and then the 15th one he threw me a slider that was way outside and i chased it and so he got one past me now sean this is not a great experiment because sean was not he was treating me like sam you know right like he didn't want to hit me in the nose he didn't have he wasn't working a plan he also was probably throwing about five miles an hour slower than he usually does. He hadn't warmed up. He wasn't coming in hot. Sean, I'm fairly confident Sean could strike me out 30 or 40 times in a row before I put any bat on the ball if there was a runner on third and one out.

Do you also feel that way? I mean, Sean's awesome and I'm bad. Yeah. I've scouted him extensively but that's true i do know his i do know when he's coming with the overhand but it's hard to uh so so that's always the question that you have to ask when you answer this is is the guy pitching you like you're eric hartman or is the guy pitching you like you're Miguel Cabrera? Right. Now, if he's pitching you like Miguel Cabrera and it's a one run game and there's a runner on first with one out in the ninth, I would guess that Eric, it would be on average, not fewer than 30,000 plate appearances. Yeah, there would be too many plate appearances

to establish that you could ever get a hit. I'm not saying that, well, we're talking home run. Right, home run, yes. I'm not saying that you can't do it. It might take 6 billion. It might take 30,001. It might never happen. The universe might end before.

But I am not ruling out the possibility. The chances are not zero. They are extremely low, though. never happen the universe might end before but i am not ruling out the positive it is not a the chances are not zero they are extremely low though extremely low and if you have enough swings if you have millions of swings and you're not getting tired it's just this imaginary world you can swing as hard as you possibly could on every single swing and that still might not be enough it might not be i but it might be i probably wouldn't bet against you yeah however if you have 30 000 swings with a wood bat against a guy who's trying not to give up a home run i would bet no on 30 000 or fewer and i'm not betting yes

on 30 000 or more i'm just not ruling it out there's there's just there's only so much space in the strike zone or in the strike zone area so enough swings and enough pitches at some point you will hit the ball on the sweet spot with your max power swing and will that be enough to hit a home run it depends on what your max power swing is, but I would think that average American male swinging at maximum power, hitting it in the perfect position, which would happen after enough swings. I think if you happen to have the perfect timing too, you could maybe pull one into the first row occasionally, but yeah, it would not happen in a short enough time frame that you could actually do it in person all right last one march 23rd 2015 brett asks if you were in charge of a

big league club and you had a pitcher and a hitter both of whom projected to have no true outcomes in the upcoming season so no strikes no uh no strikeouts, no walks, no home runs. Every single ball batted and in play. But projected to be average in all other respects. Who would you plan to trust with more batters faced or plate appearances? So would you rather have a hitter who never strikes out walks or homers or a pitcher i think he's saying or a pitcher who never left and they would have theoretically the same line right and so you just have to figure out whether that line is a neutral line or not right yeah they have the same they would essentially be like a 300 hitter like a 290 hitter

with a 290 well i guess we're allowing hit by pitches so maybe he's a 300 on base if you put every pitch in play then if this is a real person then obviously you're going to be reaching for some really far away balls that you can actually hit hard. So I'm guessing that his batting average on balls at play would not be a league average. Let's assume that nobody has figured out the compulsion to never walk strikeout or homer. Okay.

Well, they didn't with Alcides Escobar this October. So we're assuming that he hits in a normal way then he'd have basically like a 295 batting average maybe a 300 on base percentage and then what would your isolated power be if you never homered but never struck out like you'd hit I don't know you'd have seven six you'd have 700 at bats you probably would double 45 times and triple six so that's 50 or something so that'd be it'd be like 90 80 or 90 so you'd have like a three like a 295 300 370 ish uh slash line uh-huh so i think that you i think if i'm understanding this correct correctly you would take that for the pitcher and you would not take that for the hitter.

That would be good news. So the three true – and I think we know that. I think going back to BP forever, the fascination and obsession and affection for three true outcome hitters is basically that they're not just fun, but that's good. That's a good strategy for a hitter. Nobody ever talks about the three true outcome hitters is basically that they're not just fun, but that they're, that's good. That that's a good strategy for a hitter. Nobody ever talks about the three true outcome pitchers. Talk about the three true outcome hitters, because it's always been kind of assumed that that's an underrated, but productive way of hitting. And I think that's the case. So if you took out the three true outcomes and you'd just be left with essentially pitchers outcomes, I think. Yeah. Mostly. Okay. All right. So do you agree? I do. Baseball over. Let's go. All right. The very first question we ever got after the first few to podcast at

Baseball Perspectives, which we're thanking Kevin and Jason for up and in, because that was their email address also. The first one that was intended for us was from Matthew in Wellington, New Zealand. And he wanted to know aboutington new zealand and he wanted to know about david phelps he wanted to know whether david phelps would fit as the number five starter next year meaning 2013 or whether he or whether he was better suited for a long man or late inning type role literally still do not know the answer to that or would the yankees be better served including him in a trade for somebody this offseason and they they did do that can i can i tell you uh that we address this actually in the annual and well i'm going to give everybody a sneak peek okay david phelps player comment for

the 2016 annual the swing man's swing man continued his sneak assault on his role, reaching a career high 19 starts to continue an interesting trend. And then we have bullet points. 2012, 57% of his innings as a starter. 2013, 76%. 2014, 86%. 2015, 96%. While you might speculate that we're watching the Peter principle played out in bullet time, the curious thing is that phelps has pretty much already found the level of his own incompetence in the bullpen where over the past three years he has allowed 5.91 91 the 5.91 runs per nine he's been a little better when he starts 4.8 runs allowed with better control and slightly fewer homers but is in fact not the master of this niche role that we might have generously called him at some point. Rather, he's just not great.

Yeah, Matthew was pretty excited about Dave and his weapons grade two seamer, as he put it. And I responded to the email because I was so excited that we had gotten an email, even though I didn't think we were going to answer it. I said, thanks for the email and for listening to the show since the start. We'll try to find a way to work Phelps in at some point in the future. And we did it. Three years later, we did it.

So you're welcome, Matthew. I like that. I like this show, Ben. Yeah. Okay. We have fun, don't we? We sure do. We're effectively wild. All right. So you can send us emails that will answer two, three years down the road when we're desperate at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild can rate and review subscribe to the show on iTunes. And as always,

please support our sponsor, the play index baseballreference.com use the coupon code bp when you subscribe to get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription by the way it was ben second email second email was um steve osama who uh was chastising us for forgetting that the Astros had switched leagues. Oh, yeah. We got a bunch of emails about that, I remember. By the way, it was podcast hero Ned Garver's 90th birthday on Christmas,

and some people in the Facebook group got autographed balls from Ned Garver for their Christmas present. A couple people have sent him letters, and he has responded and sent back autographed balls from Ned Carver for their Christmas present. A couple people have sent him letters, and he has responded and sent back autographed cards and a nice note. So if you want to reach Ned Carver, our guest on Episode 722, you can. He is ready and waiting for your letter, and he will send you one back with an autograph and a baseball card. So get on that.

And one other bit of news, Chris Mosch, our guest from episode 779, we talked to him about shifting and what the new kinds of shifts would be and outfield shifting. And he was about to leave for the winter meetings where he was going to go job seeking. And he did get a job there. And he is going to be a player development intern for the angels so congratulations chris all right that's it for today i don't really know what we're doing this week maybe we'll we'll do some more we'll see talk to you soon

remember sam you took his hand You took his hand Instead of mine So if you want Then you can call me Call me any Monday Busy every Tuesday Maybe on a Friday No

I thought about Major League Baseball for a week or so. Who's still, who's playing? Did we, did we talk about like Miguel Cabrera retiring yet? Did that happen? Uh, it didn't. I missed that.