Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 797: How to Have the Trout Talk

Episode Date: January 14, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Chris Davis and burning ships, then answer a listener email about how to make Mike Trout matter to non-fans....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Boys, boys, boys keep swinging, boys always work it out. Hello and welcome to episode 797 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Yo. Our book is on the front page of Baseball Perspectives.
Starting point is 00:00:32 Let's have that get there. Did you pull some strings? I didn't. Wow. It just happened. Just by chance. Any of our knowledge. Just might be totally random.
Starting point is 00:00:42 Just a randomly selected book. It's ours. Cool, though. Now, if you want to buy our book, you can click on this link at BP, and BP will probably get a few cents for that. Yeah, that is probably now the best way to do it. That is the best way to distribute your dollars. Links to the Amazon page, but BP will get a tiny cut of that.
Starting point is 00:01:02 And I assume pre-ordering helps us, not just because it locks in the sale, but I assume that pre-ordering will convince our publisher that things are going great. And it might, I don't know, I've never done this, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some benefit to pre-ordering as far as marketing and distribution. Booksellers to stock it or something.
Starting point is 00:01:23 Exactly. Yeah. So if you're going to buy, look, don't buy it if you don't want to. But if you're going to buy it, and I'm a huge believer in the idea that every dollar you spend is a vote. You are voting every time you spend money. You are voting for the world to be the way you want the world to be. And so if you want your, you know, whatever, $20 of money that you're spending on your own entertainment to have some tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny extra little pull,
Starting point is 00:01:53 probably a pre-order helps. And a pre-order through BP, even better. Exactly. All right. Did you see the Buck Showalter quote about Target and Chris Davis? No. Did you see the Buck Showalter quote about Target and Chris Davis? No. So he and the Baltimore Sun, or he was doing a Q&A at a leadership conference,
Starting point is 00:02:14 and he was talking about Chris Davis. Someone asked him about an update on Chris Davis, and he says, I said to Chris last season, Chris, when you walk into a Target store, can you buy anything you want? Well, how much is enough? So that is the criterion. If you can buy anything in a Target store, then you no longer need to negotiate because you have all the money you'll ever need. How expensive do you think the most expensive item at Target is? $4,500. Yeah. I'm trying to give any guesses about what it would be. I've been browsing Target's website for a few minutes.
Starting point is 00:02:49 A TV. No, I don't think it's a TV. I sorted by TV's highest prices. $2,800 is the most expensive TV. Okay. Well, then I'm revising my answer to $2,800. Okay. We've got mountain bikes, most expensive mountain bike, $2,600.
Starting point is 00:03:08 Most expensive bed, we've got a canopy bed for $2,700. I'm still winning. On sale from $3,000. I'm still winning. We've got gas grill, $2,500. Yeah. Come on, give it to me, man. Give it to me.
Starting point is 00:03:22 Goldmine. Goldmine. No, outdoor furniture. Outdoor furniture is a huge, big-ticket item at Target. Most expensive outdoor furniture. There is a 12-piece chaise longue set for $52.99. Chris Davis owns 30 of those. Every few days, he goes into Target target and says give me whatever the most
Starting point is 00:03:47 expensive thing is and he just keeps getting the same thing yeah if he gets the 150 million he could probably buy everything in a target though not just one item but every item in a store yeah four thousand dollars for a fire pit set i'll keep, see if I can come up with any other items that Chris Davis might have a tough time affording at Target. One time I talked to Tori Hunter about this very thing, and he said that when you go to Target, it's very exact thing. It's weird because he guessed a DVD of Pineapple Express. I'm like, no, Tori, have you ever been?
Starting point is 00:04:25 Do you know what things cost? Have you ever been to a Target? It was very weird. No, he said that when you have your chance to hit your huge pay, like everybody basically gets one huge bite at the free agency. You might get multiple free agencies,
Starting point is 00:04:40 and you'll have multiple stages in your career where you're richer than you ever imagined you would be, but you get one huge bite, and he says that you're thinking about, you're not thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about your kids. You're not even at that point, you're not even really thinking about your kids' kids. You're thinking about your kids' kids' kids' kids. And I wonder how many people care about their kids' kids' kids' kids. I mean, like really, it's extremely unlikely that if you simply provide your children a upper middle class existence, you know, neighborhood, school system, access to
Starting point is 00:05:13 college and good health care, strong diet, it's very unlikely that the standard of living of your family is even going to drop significantly. And there's clearly i think in most of our imaginations a point where giving your heirs too much money stifles the uh the drive to make one's own life or one's own success or one's own fortune uh and uh warren buffett idea and regardless of that i mean they don't you have all you barely have a relationship like i don't know my great great grandparents most people can't name their parents parents parents right exactly your kids kids kids won't be able to name you either and i think tori they don't even know your name i think tori went one beyond that even and uh so I mean, you don't know your grandparents' grandparents, which is essentially
Starting point is 00:06:07 what I think he said. And yeah, I mean, who, like, I, I, I, I'm like not trying to be like edgy. Like, I genuinely don't know if I care about my grandkids' grandkids. Like, I don't know if I consider that a significant thing to work for at all. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess it's your... By that point, you're talking about, you might also be talking like even with, by that point, you might be talking about, you know, 60 kids too, 60 people. And of those 60, some of them are going to be like just awful, horrible people. You're not going to like them.
Starting point is 00:06:44 And as it is, your grandparents' grandparents already encapsulate 16. So you're one 16th of their ancestors and only at one particular moment. So it's not like you're in any way a crucial part of their life. You're one one 16th of them and only, and only one, you know, one many thousands of even that one 16th of the line. Cause there were all the ancestors before you. So genetically speaking, they're probably barely any closer to you than the average person of that future generation. Yeah, exactly. Like, right. It's like, like when you find, like when you hear the inevitable story in a few months when you'll find out that Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton are actually related. Right, yeah. But they're like seven cousins removed.
Starting point is 00:07:37 That's like you and your kids, kids, kids, kids. Yeah, pretty much. So just buy the lawn set. Screw them. Don't save money for them. Certainly don't go to a city you don't like for them. I don't think they would want you to do that. Yeah. Uh, but I think the buck show Walters extremely wise. I mean, we've talked about it. We, I want, we had a, I want to, I think I remember this being one of my favorite episodes, but we, we talked about it a long time ago that the
Starting point is 00:08:05 problem is that you have to figure out a way to make the rational decision for yourself, which might include taking less money without that money simply going to the owner. Because we don't want the owner to have that money. And you as the player don't want the owner to have that money just because you're willing to sacrifice. Like the owner is not, you're voting, it's back to this, you're voting with your financial decisions and you don't want to vote for the, you know, billionaire to get your money. So it's all about figuring out a way, you know, to make a decision that makes you happy while also feeling like you've made a decision that is rational for the world and does the most good. And so I think that my idea, the one I'm alluding to in
Starting point is 00:08:47 the episode a long time ago, was that you take a discounted deal with the team, but only on the stipulation that the team keeps a salary floor that is slightly higher than it otherwise would be so that you know that they're investing that money in players. And then not only do you get to go to the city you want, get enough money to buy the lawn set, but also you're theoretically playing for a team that is even better because they have reinvested that money in additional talent.
Starting point is 00:09:19 Right. I have yet to top the 12-piece chaise longue set. Most expensive treadmill, $2,500. I clicked on boating and water sports. I thought maybe Target would sell boats somehow, but no. Most expensive item is a paddleboard, $1,700. And the most expensive 51 jet outdoor pool and hot tub, only $4,000. So still can't do better than that.
Starting point is 00:09:44 Okay. How much do you... only $4,000. So still can't do better than that. Okay. How much do you, wait, wait, wait. How much do you think it would cost to buy all of a Target? Right, that's what I was saying. If he gets the $150 million, I wonder if he could walk into, I mean, those are big box stores, a lot of items in a typical Target, but he could probably buy a Target buy a branch so let's say that the average thing at target is 12 okay i don't know if it is obviously the things that are
Starting point is 00:10:13 cheaper are also going to be stocked more plentifully but on the other hand it's the it's got a much longer tail on the upside uh than than the downside let's call it, what did I say, 12? Let's call it 1160. All right. So for $150 million, you could buy 12,900,000 things that cost 1160 each. And I don't think a Target stocks 12,931,03 four things so i i do believe you could buy a target yeah you can buy a greenhouse at target for thirty eight hundred dollars yeah and they probably only stock like two of those two greenhouses yeah yeah the 51 jet hot tub is only available online so how many tim wallet cards do you think you could get for $150 million? More than exist in the world.
Starting point is 00:11:08 Do you think so? Yes. I mean, that's assuming that there's no gouge, that people aren't gouging you once they figure out what you're doing. Right, because they know you want all the Tim Wallet cards. Uh-huh. All right. All right. We got a good submission for burning the ships. I wanted to relay every now and then we get a submission from someone who sees burning the ships being used somewhere, often in a sports team, but not always. Don't always pass them on. But I like this one from Neil, who found a burn the ships reference in Game of Thrones,
Starting point is 00:11:41 A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in the series. And it's a quote from Ariane Martell, who I think is not in the HBO series. There wasn't enough time for her because needed more sand snakes. Everyone likes sand snakes. But she says, on the day they wed, Nymeria fired her ships so her people would understand that there could be no going back. Most were glad to see those flames for their voyaging had been long and terrible before they came to Dorne and many and But the wrinkle that George R.R. Martin adds to this is that the people who didn't want to be there hammered the boats together from the hulks of the burned ships and they sailed away again. Which sort of defeats the purpose of burning the ships. If you can just hammer the hulks together and build new ships. Really? I mean, really,
Starting point is 00:12:30 as we've talked about since burn the ships is such a misused, almost sociopathic example, and really only should motivate the manager and or owner and never the players. It's just, it's such an anti-player sentiment that really i would love to see a speech a clubhouse speech built around hammer the hulks t-shirts that say hammer the hulks yeah there's more situations when you like yeah hulks hulks h-u-l-k-s yeah yeah that there are more applicable circumstances for hammer the Hulks. I mean, you lose your best player to injury, you've got a bunch of guys on the DL, you
Starting point is 00:13:09 Hammer the Hulks. You put the team back together with what you still have. I can't remember, do we mention Burn the Ships in our book? Yes. Yeah, we do. We do. Yeah, we do. Yeah, if you listen to this podcast, you're gonna like our book. Or you'll be really bored by it because you've come across all the memes already.
Starting point is 00:13:28 All right. Anything else? No. Okay. So we got a listener email a couple days ago, and I was going to add it to our list for the listener email show. But then you responded and said you'd be happy to make it a whole episode. And we don't quite have to make it a whole episode because we've talked about Target for a while. But for the rest of this episode,
Starting point is 00:13:48 we can talk about this question from Lillian in Hanover, Germany, who says, How do I explain to my friends who don't like baseball how great Mike Trout is? Living in Germany, my attempts to share fun facts or other narratives about the greatness of the Millville meteorologist have been futile. How would you try to explain Mike Trout's excellence to people who know next to nothing about the game the man is playing? For reference, my friends know what a double play is, and I've tried to explain the significance of statistics in baseball to them so they are not completely clueless.
Starting point is 00:14:20 I think that the thing that makes Mike Trout so pleasing, there's a couple of things that you could do. And I think we'll talk about a couple of things. But I think the thing that more than anything else makes him pleasing to a baseball fan, but also accessible to any sport, to a fan of any sport, is just how good he is at everything. And I always go back, I think my favorite Mike Trout moment of his whole career was that day in August of 2012 when I was following him very closely because I was writing about him for the mag. And there was a day which I had been kind of eagerly looking forward to because I thought that it might happen. And I really wanted this detail to happen. And sure enough, there was a day when he led the league. He led the majors in offensive runs, added defensive runs, saved and base running runs.
Starting point is 00:15:09 And just I think that anybody can appreciate a player who is the best at all the facets of the game. And I mean, I love talking to I have a friend who follows all the other sports and I don't, and I love talking to him about the other sports and just hearing these stories of, you know, how good other people are, how good these athletes are and other things. And so like one way of being awesome is sort of, and I know that he's much more than this, but for simplicity, the Steph Curry model where he's so good at a thing that you can't hardly understand how good he is at it and with curry it's you know him shooting more three-pointers than anybody in history while also making a higher percentage of them than anyone in
Starting point is 00:15:58 history is just such an unfathomable thing and you appreciate how good he is at that one thing but the other is to just be the best at all of it to be you know like if there was a guy like babe ruth is that like one of the things that makes babe ruth so good for stories is that he was you know he has pitching records he holds pitching records like he's not he does it's not just that he pitched he wasn't just like you know deon sanders played two sports or whatever. He, he has records for pitching while also being obviously the greatest hitter ever. And so for Trout to be, to, to, for you to be able to say, well, there are three ways that a baseball player can be good. He can hit, he can field, he can run and Trout is the best hitter and the best fielder and the best runner, or at least was, is I think pretty cool and pretty easy for anybody to appreciate.
Starting point is 00:16:50 And that is no longer true. Exactly. He is no longer the best runner. He's no longer the best fielder. You know, that was just a moment in August, but it's also has become less true as he's gotten older, but in a way, and I don't know if this would appeal to the fan in the same way, but in a way, the fact that he has been the best player in baseball in like three or four different ways already, that he is constantly changing and still remains the best player in kind of different shapes, is to me, and I think to us, even more enjoyable. So there's just sort of a, there's a perfection to him.
Starting point is 00:17:28 There's an invincibility to him. There is a flawlessness to him where you don't have to understand batting average or you don't have to know how we measure defense. You don't have to know even the rules of baseball. If you just say, well, you know, imagine that the best defenseman in hockey was also the best passer in hockey and imagine that the best defenseman in hockey was also the
Starting point is 00:17:45 best passer in hockey and was also the best scorer in hockey. Yeah, it's right. Curry, I was going to bring up Curry, but someone like Messi, for instance, I don't watch soccer. I barely pay any attention to soccer, but there was a long 538 feature about Messi and just how much better he is than anyone else. And there was stuff at Grantland about him too. And I enjoyed reading that because it was sort of statistically done
Starting point is 00:18:11 and that kind of approach appeals to me. And yeah, and he was just so much better than everyone else. Like if you don't know anything about the sport, then describing the nuances of his game might not appeal to the person. Like, I don't, you know, talking about his field awareness or something or about how he sees the play as it's developing before anyone else does, or something about his technique might not appeal to someone who doesn't care about the technique, but being able to convey how much better he is at that thing than anyone else. I'm interested in that in just about any field. It doesn't have to be sports. If there's a if there's I mean, you sent me you sent me a Gene Weingarten article the other day about the best children's entertainer in Washington, D.C. from 10 years or so ago.
Starting point is 00:19:01 And that was interesting because he was so popular and better than everyone else. And that's something that appeals to anyone, even if you're not interested in that specific thing. I think my two favorite depictions of the greatness of people who are just at the top of their field are A Sense of Where You Are,
Starting point is 00:19:20 Sean McPhee's article, and then book about Bill Bradley as a college basketball player and the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi. And those are both instances where my understanding of the craft itself is limited or even less than limited, almost non-existent. And yet there is a way of laying out the both players perfections that becomes very clear. And even if at the end, I don't, I still don't know how to prepare sushi, but I understand the process much better. I understand the challenges of the process much better. and to, I don't know, to see both the ease with which it occurs, but also the challenge of maintaining it, which are kind of in a sense contradictory and yet both true at the same time
Starting point is 00:20:12 is extremely satisfying. I think the other thing about trout that probably is universally understandable and appealing, and it might be a challenge because there are other sports where this is explicitly not true. But baseball is a sport where you don't usually peak at age 20, 21, 22, 23. And for Trout to essentially be the best player in baseball at an age so far in advance of when baseball players are expected to be able to perform at that level is also really rare and part of, I think, what makes us love him so much. I mean, we would love Trout if these last four seasons had come from ages 26 to 29, just as we love Chase Utley and we loved other good players. Who are other good players, Ben?
Starting point is 00:21:04 Miguel Cabrera. I can't think other good players ben miguel cabrera think of any we loved miguel cabrera and you know we loved jeff bagwell and we loved you know frank thomas but i think that we at least as baseball fans and again this might not apply to your german friends but i guess i would guess it does we We also really, really love extreme ages. We love the old guy who's way better than he's supposed to. And we love the young guy who's way better than he's supposed to for different reasons. And Trout's age is, I think, undeniably a big part of the story of his career thus far. He's still only 20.
Starting point is 00:21:44 What, he's going to be 24 this year i mean he is like essentially right now at the age that like nomar garciaparra came up and began playing i mean like he's done so so much uh and he's just not supposed to be able to do that and i think people appreciate that like i just started i'm like uh, like four paragraphs into this article about a rock climbing prodigy. This was in the New Yorker about a week ago. And she's, you know, the most talented rock climber in the world, which is cool. I would read that.
Starting point is 00:22:18 Like, I'm definitely going to read that no matter what. If you tell me that the New Yorker wrote about the best rock climber in the world, I am completely going to read it. matter what if you tell me that the new yorker wrote about the best rock climber in the world i am completely going to read it now you tell me that she's 14 and i'm like really excited to read it right it's a different thing it's a different story and uh so to just be able to say that like most baseball players don't even appear in the majors until they're 23 they're usually not at their best until they're 26 or 27 and trout is just now to you know playing his age 24 season um that he has been essentially playing just as he did when he was a kid he has
Starting point is 00:22:53 essentially been playing in a league for adults while he himself was not yet an adult yeah so that's you'd have to go that way because the fun fact you were looking for in 2012 no longer even comes close to working i mean he he is a different player now he hits for more power but he is not going to he might lead in offensive runs but he's not going to leave in defensive runs and he's not going to lead in base running runs because he doesn't really steal anymore so he's you know far from a one-dimensional player but not an all dimensional player to the extent that he was. So at this point you would go with either the through age 23 sort of stat, like he is
Starting point is 00:23:34 the, he is the most valuable player through this age ever or whatever the status, or would you go with the metamorphosis angle? He was the best at everything. And then now he's totally different, but he's still the best. I guess the evolution kind of angle is interesting. Like people write about Roger Federer, for instance, changing and changing his game and still being one of the best players. And I guess in his case, that's more of a compensating for age and declining skills. Whereas with Trout, maybe it's a little bit of that, but it also seems to be a choice
Starting point is 00:24:10 to some extent. But it is still interesting that he is still either the best player in baseball or certainly the best player in the league. And he's doing it totally differently than he used to. So that is interesting. So I guess those are both the ways that you would go. I agree that if you could still make the case that he was the best at every aspect of baseball, that would be the most appealing. But since he is no longer that, you could go with the
Starting point is 00:24:35 through age 23 or the he's different, but he's still the best. Those are both interesting angles. Do you think that Trout translates well to highlights? If you were going to send someone a highlight of Mike Trout to try to convey why Mike Trout is good or that he's the best, what would you pick? And do you think whatever it is would actually encapsulate Mike Trout? If I could use his whole career, yes. I think you have two extremely rich highlight possibilities. One is the home run stealing. He had that period where he was taking away home runs. I mean, he did that last year, right? He had two, I think, at least, maybe, last year.
Starting point is 00:25:17 There was one really good one. Okay, so those are always good, and so maybe you still have those. But I don't, so maybe. But there was also something about those as a rookie one a couple of them were like perfect highlights they just by chance they were perfectly framed uh by the act itself they were a special even in the genre of stealing home runs and there was this great benefit of him reacting giddily to them. Sometimes giddily, sometimes seemingly in awe of himself.
Starting point is 00:25:52 And so those made them very satisfying. But yes, the home run stealing always plays. Home run stealing is maybe the best highlight that any player can have. Although he has done more than his fair share of home run stealing, especially because he's not really known for his outfielding. I mean, he's a good outfielder, but that's probably not the first thing that you would mention about Mike Trout, but he does seem to have that distinctive skill or he's just happened to get a lot of balls that were in the perfect position for someone to be
Starting point is 00:26:25 able to steal a home run. I mean, the most, it looks great when anyone does that. I mean, that's, that's a kind of highlight that makes almost anyone look like the best player in baseball. Yeah, not if it's the one where you're just like stationary and you hop a little bit, but if you're actually drifting back and you get some air and maybe you step on the wall or something. I think the Gary Matthews home run robbery is probably just the best looking play ever. I don't know if there's anything I'd rather watch than that. Maybe the Jim Edmonds catch. But the Gary Matthews catch is, I mean, that's like, if it's not number one, it's 1A.
Starting point is 00:27:03 Yeah, that or the Andy Chavez one. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so that could make anyone look like a superstar. Hang on, I'm watching Andy Chavez. Yeah, the great thing about the Chavez play is that it was like a snow cone. It was like on the edge of the glove. Okay, no, Andy Chavez one is not. You're right.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Gary Matthews is much better than Andy Chavez. Yeah, Gary Matthews one is amazing. Hang on, I'm watching that one now uh yeah there's a still of it which is enough to remember just how here it goes oh goodness so if lillian sent all his friends in hanover that play and said gary matthews jr he's the best at baseball no one would doubt it so I don't know I guess the home run robberies in that trout seems to do them more often than anyone else makes him look better I don't I'm trying to think of like it's not it's not like your German friends are gonna see a Mike Trout catch and then be like I don't know Gary Matthews Jr. is better, that's the point is that you can show them, you can show them. You can fool them. I always did think that the
Starting point is 00:28:07 Trout one in Baltimore was slightly overrated, but I also have always thought that overrated conversations are stupid. Right. So forget about that. The other thing that I think no longer necessarily plays as well, but there was something about just seeing trout run his rookie year he was so big and it's always hard to know whether speed is going to be conveyed i mean how fast is he going when you don't have a frame of reference there uh but i maybe it was only because i knew he was fast that i could project the speed onto the picture but i i would much rather personally watch video of trout running during his rookie year than even the home run robberies. At one point, I did a comparison of who was faster, him or Peter Borges.
Starting point is 00:28:56 And I had to do a Trout triple gif. I could watch that all day. I could watch him running to first all day as a rookie. And I don't know if he still is that fast. But you're right. At this point right now, what is there? It would be probably the most defining Mike Trout greatness highlight right now. It would be him hitting a home run to right center really deep.
Starting point is 00:29:20 And that's probably not going to necessarily play all that well. And that's probably not going to necessarily play all that well. The best Mike Trout greatness thing of the past year, I think, is that he had that glaring hole and everyone was talking about it, that he couldn't hit high pitches or high fastballs and everyone was throwing him more and more and more. And then people talked about it over the offseason. And he was clearly aware of it. And then he worked on it over the winter. And then he came into this past season and was like one of the best at hitting those pitches. Just because he doesn't really seem to have a weakness that he can't correct.
Starting point is 00:29:57 I don't know if that's something that would appeal to someone who doesn't know much about baseball. If you told them he couldn't hit this type of pitch and everyone thought they'd found his vulnerability and started exploiting it and then he adjusted and was the best again i guess that's that's kind of interesting but it doesn't really boil down to a highlight yeah i think it's probably not extreme enough i think if you could show that he was it baseball is not the sport that makes this possible but if you could show that he was the best in the league in all four like on away pitches inside pitches up pitches and down pitches then i think you could pretty like with about one or two sentences you could put that into context and explain how great that makes him unfortunately i he's not he's gonna be like you're gonna be like and he's the 34th best hitter on high pitches, and he's like 14th on low pitches and 63rd on away pitches,
Starting point is 00:30:47 and they're going to be like, 62 people. That's my German accent. Good German accent. Yes. Been really workshopping that one, saving it for just the right moment. Now you've heard it. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:04 All right. All right. Anything else that you would say about Mike Trout? Would you send his tweets with unusual punctuation? Would you send some of his least interesting quotes? They're almost shockingly uninteresting. No. No. I guess we've covered it.
Starting point is 00:31:19 He doesn't work quite as well as Barry Bonds' stats, I guess. I mean, nothing works as well as that, but he works as well as anyone else in baseball. I don't know. He maybe doesn't have as visually impressive a signature skill at this point as other players. Like if you showed them Carter C caps throwing his 102 mile per hour perceived velocity fastball and doing his hop or something that might be more interesting than anything mike
Starting point is 00:31:52 trout does or if you showed i don't know whoever hits the longest home runs john carlos stanton hitting his longest home run of the season or something that might be more interesting or if you showed billy hamilton stealing his fastest base of the season or something that might be more interesting or if you've shown billy hamilton stealing his fastest base of the season or something like that might be even easier to convey than anything trout does at this point yeah i mean to some degree he's this is all you know always kind of the problem with baseball players getting recognition is that it is not a game where the individual can stand out. There's, it's not like basketball where an entire offense runs through one player every game. And, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:31 there's only five guys on the floor. It's not like football where, you know, two or three guys on the offense basically control, you know, get all of the stats, get all of the fancy stats. And it's not like soccer where, you know, Messi can score all the goals in a game pretty reliably. So it's, you know, there's not going to ever be, there's just too many players in baseball. There's too many players on his own team. There's too many players. There's too few plays that he's starring in. And so it's going to be hard for anything to really stand out. So most of the things that you would say about Trout require you to understand all the context of
Starting point is 00:33:11 baseball. I think that maybe the thing that I would say to somebody who is vaguely familiar with baseball, and this is not all that well put together quite yet, but if you just look at his player page, he has led the league in runs. He's led the league in RBIs. He's led the league in steals. He's led the league in walks. He's led the league in slugging. He's led the league in OPS plus. Those are all very different, unrelated stats in a lot of ways. And, um, that he's done all those not in a single year, but spread out over four years. He led the league in runs and steals one year, walks and runs another year, RBIs and runs another year, OPS and OPS Plus last year.
Starting point is 00:33:53 And he'll probably lead the league in home runs next year. And he almost, it would be cooler, but he almost had a batting title a couple of times. And just to see the variety of ways that he's been the best player in baseball consistently and yet also differently each time is clear, but you do have to know some baseball to understand that. Yes. Okay. Well, it took me the whole podcast, but I have found a more expensive item at Target than the 12-piece Cheslong set. It is the most expensive piece of fine jewelry at Target, which is a one-carat princess diamond solitaire ring in 14-carat white gold. $58.99. Still well within Chris Davis's price tag. Okay. Lillian, if any of that advice was helpful,
Starting point is 00:34:46 if you start a Mike Trout fan club in Hanover, let us know. If anyone knows of any more expensive items at Target, let us know. You can email us at podcast at baseball perspectives.com. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the show in iTunes. Thanks for listening.
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