Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 830: The Longest Listener Email Show

Episode Date: March 2, 2016

Ben and Sam play a quick player guessing game, banter about pitching-coach projects and Coors Field fences, and answer listener emails about the Cubs and personal catchers, irrational fan beliefs, Mike Trout, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 830 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined as always by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hey, pal. Taking our weekly break from team preview podcasts to answer some emails and perchance to banter. Do you have anything to banter about?

Quick, quick BP drinking game. Oh, no. Just a quick one one this is just the first one i landed on it's not it's not like a special one i just thought i'd do it all right you ready yeah after nine seasons and 1028 innings in the majors here's this guy he's one of the game's most frustrating talented and inconsistent pitchers dazzling and a half no dazzling and a half season's worth of work before hitting the dl with an elbow injury never to return when he's on the mound and it's all clicking he looks like a legit number one starter but he's averaged his 20 starts and 126 innings a year since 2008 and his career fit illustrates that he has trouble tapping into his

talent there's too much upside here to decline his 13 million dollar option for 2016 but that doesn't mean anyone should feel great about picking it up elevators have fewer ups and downs we've got a nine season player injury plagued. I'm going to say, is it? Could it be? Does he play for an American League team? He does. Does he play for an AL East team? He does.

Could he be? Clay Buckle. He is! You got it. All right. Let's do a quick round of how much has he earned oh wow bringing back all our games all right clay buckled so we know he's had a nine season career we know that this year he will make 13 million dollars yes but we're not counting that no

certainly not all right so i'm gonna say so 13 must be his his peak earning for a season or higher than his peak thus far so i'll say he's made 39 million i'll guess like uh like 19.6 that's a big gap yeah uh it It's 30, 30.5. All right. If you were Clay Buchholz and you had made $30.5 million and you were going to make $13 million a year this year and say for some reason you could not play baseball anymore, would you ever work again?

I'd probably do a daily podcast about baseball. Yeah. There are a lot of rich people working in baseball for not that much money. Yeah. And probably do something. Work is fulfilling sometimes. All right. I want to bring up a couple things. So if you take a look at the Pakoda projections for Ryan Vogelsang and Juan Nicasio. Well, just today I was. Oh, really? Maybe for the same reason that I'm going to bring them up right now.

So Ryan Vogelsang is projected for a 4.24 ERA. Juan Nicasio projected for a somewhat surprising to me, 3.84 ERA. And what these two pitchers have in common is that they are the new Ray Searidge projects. And as this article on CBS Local I'm reading calls Ray Searidge a rock star. He's a rock star coach. He is the reigning guru and wizard among pitching coaches with a fairly long line of reclamation project successes in a fairly short period of time. We've talked many times about how quickly coaches get anointed as geniuses and how it doesn't always last. So would you, if you accept those Pocota projections, and I don't know whether you had strong opinions about Ryan Vogelsang and Juan Nicasio coming into this discussion, but if, let's say, you agreed perfectly with Pakoda, and then you found out that Ray Searidge has taken these two pitchers under his wing, would you move those projections? And if so, by what percent? So what is Searidge's history?

So Searidge got, he, he got Jay Hap to be awesome. As Matt Trueblood identified, there were a lot of changes that, that preceded Ray Searidge's involvement. And it's conceivable that you could say that Searidge was the final move, or you could say that Hap was the 80, 85% of the work was done. He got, well, A.J. Burnett was bad, was good with Searidge, and then bad without, and then good again with. And Francisco Liriano has generally been good with him,

although was good, was even better at points before, however, not in this particular style. And Burnett, of course, had been good before. Yeah, certainly. And so can you give me others? Edinson Volquez. Oh, yeah, yeah, Volquez. But then Volquez was good without Searidge.

Does that matter? The question is, it's interesting because like the old Dave Duncan thing was that people would worry that once Duncan, once a player left Duncan, he would lose the Duncan magic. So the question is, does Siraj magic hold? Can we credit Siraj for Volquez's good season with the Royals? I don't know. Because Volquez wasn't actually good with the Pirates.

He was fit lucky. Peripheral defiant. Yeah. yeah are there others melanson was good but melanson's just a reliever you can't i don't ever give i mean you really gotta repeat with relievers yeah for me to give you credit for relievers are there there are probably others i know there's a fangrass community blog post where someone tried to statistically determine whether Seared really makes people better. Well, just tell me what they found, and then I'll give you your answer. I think they found no conclusion. All right.

It was not a very long sample, not that long, not that many pitchers, and it's always hard to untangle the pitching coach from the manager and the ballpark and you know everything else i mean look vogel song's 50 so i'm not gonna give any credit i'm not gonna adjust his his projections nicasio just switched from bullpen to relief and was really good as a reliever uh already so i'm i'm probably not going to adjust that there's also that the advice that searage gave them that was reported sounds basically like throw inside and get grounders race here it's like if if i showed up at spring training and pirates camp and i was trying to pretend to be race here and was just doing my best Ray Searidge impression, I'd probably say pitch inside and throw some two-seamers.

Look, with the Stompers, we had a manager who was a center fielder who was not in any way a pitching coach, but pitched in a Sunday men's league. He told everybody pitch inside and get grounders.

I mean, look, I'm always amused. Amused isn't quite the right word. I'm intrigued by the way that pitching gurus rotate from one team to another. And I'm not denying that some of them are great and that maybe Searidge is great. But at this point, LA, it's a pretty high bar to clear for me. Yeah. Or maybe it's just that he's able to persuade pitchers to do these things that any pitching coach would advise that they do. I don't know. I mean, the Pirates have definitely followed through on this pitching inside and throw sinkers plan more so than other teams have. I don't know if they have evidence that it works better than other teams do, but if you just look at like the percentage of

inside pitches or sinkers over the last several years, it's pirates, pirates, pirates. So they have at least, you know, I don't know whether the advice is different, but if it's the same advice, they've been better at persuading players to take it. So Ben, God shows up and says he knows exactly how good every pitching coach is, and he's offering you a chance to bet. What odds would you take that Searidge is above average, and what odds would you take that Se Sirich is the best of 30? I think it's very likely that he is above average. I think it's more likely than not. So I would, if I were doing it in probabilities, I'd say there's a 80% chance that he's above average. Oh, so then you would definitely adjust his Pocota.

Like if you had control of Pocota, you would wait it. Yeah, I guess so. So assuming that I allow that a pitching coach is on average going to. I don't know that an above average pitching coach necessarily affects every player or is even likely to. Maybe once you get to the majors, you are the pitcher you are. And for most guys, it's not going to make that much of a difference. But I would say there's a very good chance that he's above average and i would say a pretty low

chance that he's the best i'd give it a uh i don't know a 10 chance that he's the best which is obviously better than random yeah yeah i would i would agree probably about the 10 and i would probably go like 65 that he's above average uh-huh okay would probably go like 65% that he's above average. Uh-huh. Okay. And if he's below average, the number of articles that have been written is kind of crazy. Yeah, but I mean, look, all these guys were hired by smart people who like, it's not like they just picked a name. It's not like they're like any pitchers around.

Like we did. Like, again, going back to the Stompers, our pitching coach was just, who's the oldest guy? That was how we selected our pitching coach. I'm just guessing that like Alex Anthopoulos had more than that. Right. Probably. So the other quick thing I wanted to bring up,

the Rockies are raising outfield fences at Coors Field. Really? Tearing them down? Wow. That's a weird strategy. Although on this show we've talked about what the game would be like without fences. I would love a team that raised its fences. Very nice wordplay. The outfield fences between right center and right field are going to be eight

feet higher i defy i challenge you to twist that word um they're hiring their fences for what like pr selling tickets i mean a fence can't do a job that a man can do. So this is surprising to me because... Oh, although I guess in Colorado, everybody's high here. That's true. Yeah, there you go. All right, there we go. The Rockies have never adjusted their outfield fences. Is that right? I don't think they have. I quickly looked on Wikipedia. There's no history of fence changing. This article in the Denver Post mentions no previous fence changes. And of course, they have very deep fences to begin with. It's the biggest outfield in baseball. But you'd still think that at some point, I mean, that's the go-to move whenever a team wants to do something to its offense, its run scoring at home. It either

moves the fences or it raises or lowers the fences. And we've seen, you know, Citi Field, this has happened, and Petco Park, this has happened over and over. And those are less extreme than Coors Field has been. And of course, there's the humidor, and that is maybe a more drastic change than any fence change. And so maybe they felt like they didn't need to do the fence change because they were changing the ball the way the ball was in Colorado. But still, you'd think at some point it's just it's such an easy move to change the fences. And I'm surprised that it's never happened. that inflating offense at home helps the Rockies. I don't know. It's always confusing to make a case about what in Coors Field helps or hurts the Rockies.

But I was listening to Jeff Britich on the StatCast podcast with Mike Petriello recently. That sounds fun. That sounds like a good listen. It was. And I mean, he was very circumspect and reluctant to divulge anything, of course, as most GMs are. But he tried to put a spin on Coors Field and say that it can be a home field advantage for the Rockies in that they're really good at home. And it's true that they're really good at home. And I think it's one of the best known splits in baseball. I think it's also maybe one of the most underrated splits in baseball still, that the Rockies, even over the last decade, and this is post-Humidor when Coors Field hasn't been

that crazy, have scored the most runs of any team in baseball at home and scored the fewest runs of any team in baseball on the road. And that is crazy. I mean, that is enormous. That's bigger than we typically think of park effects being. And there's been a lot of research into why that happens. And it seems like it's not just that the ball flies farther in cores, but that there is some sort of hangover effect for Rockies hitters when they play in Colorado at altitude and then they go on the road and the ball moves differently. And it seems like Rockies hitters are worse on the road than you would expect them to be just based on the park factor.

And it seems as though there's perhaps a developmental challenge for young pitchers particularly. developmental challenge yeah for you for young pitchers particularly that's i would i kind of feel like that's the biggest thing that it's just it's just too demoralizing to be a rocky's young pitcher and they flame out okay or any rocky's pitcher so you could say that maybe and also and also that the strain of it's it also seems possible to me that the strain of having to pitch those innings puts more pressure on the ligaments and so on tendons of pitchers. Purely offensively though, from the run scoring perspective, you could make the case that it makes sense to maximize your runs at home as much as possible because on the road, you have this hangover, this penalty. It doesn't seem like there's a way to get around that easily

it might just be a core attribute of playing there and then not playing there and changing the fence height doesn't affect that you can change the fences but when guys go on the road the ball's still going to move differently and the air is still going to be thicker and all of that stuff so you could make the case that they should just make hay at home. They should try to, you know, they're better at home. They have this advantage at home. They should try to score a ton of runs at home because they know that on the road, bad things are going to happen. And so you could say that in this sense, they are now hurting their ability to score at home, but not helping their ability to score on the road. Of course, you know, they're doing the same to the team that is playing in Coors, but maybe the Rockies are better suited to take advantage of that,

their hitters at least. And then I guess balancing that out, there is the demoralizing aspect. So maybe it would be less daunting for pitchers to pitch in Coors Field if the fences are higher. And it seems like they determined this using, you know, stat cast stuff and they projected that this will be five to six percent fewer home runs hit at course field. And I don't know, maybe that makes pitchers happier. But it also seems like, I don't know, it's really hard always to tell what the effect of course field is or any change to course field is, but there's a way that you could look at this as possibly hurting the Rockies, at least offensively. If this were in 1998, I would totally agree with you. I mean, it seems

like having an extreme park should definitely help the home team because you can build around it. You can build a roster that is particularly suited to that park that's logical but we've got two decades of this single franchise struggling to do anything with it and it's not like they just discovered they've tried and it just nothing has worked and and in fact I don't know if this is actually true but around six years ago or so five years ago when I was still with the register I looked at home field advantage and by team over the course of a fairly long period and the teams with the most extreme parks on either end tended to have smaller home fields advantages. And so while it

is very logical and rational, it doesn't seem to actually be the case. And I'm not sure why that is given that Coors Field seems like an impediment and not an advantage, the factors of Coors Field seem like an impediment and not an advantage. If you're trying to make Coors Field more like a normal park, because you've just given up on the hypothesis, raising the fences seems good. That seems better than moving them out. I mean, when they moved them out, they do have very deep fences, and that created a whole new set of problems because then the fielders just had way too much ground to cover, and so Coors Field BABIPs are just absolutely absurd.

They always have been. And this at least brings you into a more rational kind of game where home runs are not as frequent, and BABIPs are perhaps not as frequent because you're not having as many bloopers fall in in front of outfielders who have to play way deep and cover up these huge territories. So I wouldn't be super confident it would work

because maybe you're just creating a situation where the green monster is around the entire park, but it seems more plausible than anything else that's been tried. I mean, other than the humidor. The humidor is pretty good. Yeah, I guess so. It seems to me that it just doesn't really address the core problem of Coors Field. No, what is, though?

What is? I mean, moving. I don't know. Yeah, no, moving to another city addresses that. Yeah. But I'm saying there may be no way to address that You might just be stuck with that And if you are stuck with that Then maybe the best you can do is just score tons of runs at home No I know that just didn't work

They've done that That didn't work There was a period in time Where they had Nafee Perez Putting up like a 980 home OPS And they lost Didn't work Like Jeff Conine

Had like a 1300 OPS at home Didn't work Yeah I mean it gets to a point where Just doing something is maybe Better than not doing anything I like the walls idea as much as anything else. I'm sure they've done their homework. All right.

So let's take some questions from listeners. By the way, Ben. Yeah. How many of the 30 pitching coaches do you think you can name if I gave you a sparkle? If I had all day, I could probably do, I'd know all their names. Like, I don't think I would see any of their names. Right, like if it was multiple choice.

And say I've never heard of him before. Sure. Yeah, but just naming them and placing them with the proper team off the top of my head, I don't know, I'd like to think I could do 20. You'd like to think you could. I asked you what you could. I think I could do 20. All right, that's pretty good.

Okay, Let's answer a question from John. Did you write about personal catchers recently? Someone wrote about personal catchers. Not that recently. I wrote about Tim Lincecum sabotaging himself with Hector Sanchez like three years ago. Yeah. Anyway, John says, I have Kyle Schwarber on my dynasty team and I'm a Cubs fan. So this Yahoo blurb caught my eye. Mark Gonzalez of the Chicago Tribune writes that there's some talk of Kyle Schwarber being Kyle Hendricks' personal catcher. Having Schwarber be on the dish for Hendricks starts would allow the young slugger to keep his catching skills sharp while also paving the way for more playing time

in left field for Jorge Soler. However, Gonzalez notes that manager Joe Maddon hasn't committed to having Schwarber catch Hendricks exclusively because he wants Miguel Montero to stay sharp. Montero already sits out. John Lester starts as David Ross is the Southpaw's personal catcher. And John wants to know, does still having David Ross, who had a 44 OPS plus in 2015, serve as Lester's personal catcher make any baseball sense whatsoever. The Cubs have more hitters than they can get in the lineup, and they're giving at-bats to Ross every turn through the rotation. David Ross has played 14 seasons with a total of 8.3 baseball reference war. I love David Ross and think he's awesome as team dad, even if it costs a roster spot. But why would

a team give him 30 plus starts? By the way, 8.3 baseball reference war over 14 partial seasons for a backup catcher is pretty good. I mean, you can make an argument that David Ross at this stage in his career is very bad. I don't consider that to be a particularly impressive stat though. And I'm guessing his baseball prospectus warp is considerably higher it is he is at uh 21.8 baseball prospectus which accounts for his good framing wow that's a lot yeah that's that's a lot i might have to ask carrie about that that's a lot of warp yeah well

that's what happens when you're a good defensive catcher these days. Absolutely. So he still is, according to BP stats, he's still in limited playing time, been five runs above average on defense over the last couple of years, each of the last couple of years. So let's just agree to this premise that David Ross is horrible, even though we might argue with that. Okay.

So the question is- Projected for a 225 true average, which is horrible. Yeah. David Ross is also 50. So the question is, does it make sense to have a personal catcher? Now, in a lot of situations, you can make the case that there's no real loss. Like if there was no Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Schwarber had become a dentist, then you'd have two catchers on this team, and one of them's got to sit out roughly every fifth day anyway. And it seems very smart. It seems as good as anything else to have that fifth start, that every fifth start means something.

And so having a relationship between a catcher and a pitcher in general doesn't seem to me problematic. The issue here is that there's a surplus of catchers and that you could very easily sketch out a season where David Ross is not playing at all and you might get more, right? Mm-hmm. So why would a team give him 30 plus starts is that the question yes well because i think i don't know i feel like john lester when he signed he

demanded david ross yeah like david ross came with him a david ross class yeah i feel like i feel like john lester would be mad and might make a fuss yeah yeah i mean maybe that's enough of a reason maybe you think that lester would actually be significantly worse i don't have a different catcher by the way i don't i think that i think that it well i think that it there is probably good reason to think that a catcher pitcher relationship is very important and that having a pitcher throw exclusively to one catcher might have some benefits some additional benefits where the catcher becomes particularly attuned to that pitcher and the pitcher becomes a particularly trustworthy trusting sorry of that catcher but i don't know that it necessarily is the case that only one catcher can

do that. Like I feel like having a pitcher catcher relationship established early where every bullpen is to that catcher and every game is that catcher might have some benefit. I buy that. I just don't know whether it's the specific personalities involved or whether it is the format. It's kind of like what Russell talks about with chemistry, where you can maybe make the case that a team leader in the clubhouse is a very valuable thing. And if you don't have one, you lose a lot in overall team chemistry or whatever. But instead of thinking about the leader in the clubhouse as Johnny Gomes or Brandon Inge, you think about it as a vacant position that someone will fill. And so if Johnny Gomes gets

traded, well then maybe Chris Young takes that position or maybe Omar Infante takes that position or whoever is around takes that position. And so the things that Johnny Gomes and Brandon Inge do are valuable, but it's not necessarily the case that Johnny Gomes and Brandon Inge are valuable any more than it is the case that, for instance, you could say that the guy who takes your toll on the freeway is valuable. Like you could go, oh, well, if that guy weren't there, think how many dollars the county would lose. Like nobody would be taking the $5. Well, no, you'd have someone else sit in the booth. Right. And so I am skeptical that David Ross is the only man who can make John Lester feel comfortable on the mound. And there is a point where you become too awful. Now, there's a

lot more to this than that david ross probably would uh david ross apologists would probably argue that david ross might have value beyond john lester he might be a a guy who kyle schwarber benefits from for instance yeah he might be a guy that montero weren't ross if if he were someone else with the same stats, even if John Lester loved him, if no one else on the team felt that way, he probably wouldn't still be a personal catcher. Yeah, exactly. But he's David Ross, and everyone loves him. Even I love him. And if you're on a team with a bunch of young hitters, you think he has extra chemistry value.

So that's a big part of it. I literally grow my beard with the same patch of gray that David Ross does because that's how much I love him. Yeah. Yeah. I interviewed him once and I never wanted to attend. Who's the best interview you ever had? I don't know. I'll have to think about that.

Yeah. I mean, there's one way of answering that question is who is the best for you as a person trying to get content. Another is who you thought would be. Like I was completely smitten when I talked to Jason Giambi. And he didn't actually, he didn't, I don't even think I used any quotes from him. He gave me nothing of use. Yeah, I don't know if David Ross's answers were particularly notable, but he just seemed like a guy I wanted to keep talking to. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So much so that I would employ him even despite his 44 OPS plus,

perhaps. Yeah. Or maybe he's, you know, Lester already can't throw to first. Maybe Ross is the only thing he's throwing to home plate. So put Ross ross at first yeah that might work all right next question from jordan whenever a team signs a foreign hitter or pitcher we debate how he will fare against major league talent however i imagine that a player's fielding ability would translate very well since fielding is not really affected by an opponent's skills is my assumption here true and do you think the teams will eventually pay top dollar for an ozzy smith like talent from overseas i would say that the assumption is maybe maybe more true than it is for hitting and pitching but not completely true well wait though we, though. We're only basically talking about Japanese and Korean players, right?

Yeah, Cuban. Yeah, I guess Cuban. Because Japanese and Korean players are, unless I'm wrong, they're playing on turf, right? Yeah, well, that's a big thing. So when I wrote a few years ago, I wrote that article for BP about scouting Japanese players and talked to Dan Evans, and he mentioned that he said the transition would actually be the toughest for starting

pitchers and middle infielders. And he said middle infielders suddenly play on different infield composition, as instead of mostly all dirt or artificial turf infields, they are playing on infields that include a lot of grass and different dirt composites. They are playing on infields that include a lot of grass and different dirt composites. And he compared it to taking a golfer out of Florida and asking him to putt on California's greens for the first time. Oh, yeah. Which doesn't mean much to me.

No, great analogy. I hear it's hard. Bermuda? Bermuda? I think Bermuda is a word that you would use for... That's a kind of grass. That's literally all I know is that bermuda something about bermuda so they're players like kaz matsui he won four gold gloves in japan and he only lasted one season at short stuff in the majors made a bunch of errors wasn't very good do you think it do you think it matters that much the the turf to grass because the arm and the range would theoretically be consistent and so you're only talking about and you're kind of talking about hands that's more or less what you're talking

about do you think there's a big difference and maybe it's not like it's not like these guys are playing on um you know high school fields either it's pretty clean they're pretty clean clean I mean different play styles too like Japanese hitters bunt all the time maybe guys really good at coming in on on weak grounders but isn't so good at fielding hard hit balls or I mean runners there don't take out middle infielders the way that they do here so that's another concern so there are ways in which the game is different and ways in which the surface is different. I don't know how much of that applies to Cuba. I don't know if that's often a different surface. I'm not aware of it being. Maybe the fields are not as well groomed, but you wouldn't think that would make a guy worse coming to a better groomed field unless

he just has some sort of inherent bad hop ability i have probably mentioned this before but some years ago before i was with bp i asked kevin goldstein if somehow he could get the nine best or eight best defenders in the world the best at every position how many of them would be players who are not in the major leagues, not actively in the major leagues, not the minors, not Cuba, not Japan, not a guy who couldn't hit and washed out in high school, but not in the majors. And he said none, that they're all in the majors.

The best defenders are all in the majors. And I think about that a lot, partly because I'm not, I'm still slightly unconvinced about whether it's true. But I think that there is a very strong correlation, even though the skills don't necessarily seem to be perfectly related. I think there's a pretty strong correlation between the ability to do one baseball skill and a seemingly totally unrelated baseball skill like hitting and even like pitching. I think that probably, uh, if you wanted the thousand best pitchers in the world, you'd sign pitchers. And if you wanted the next thousand best, you'd sign non-pitching major league hitters that there's just a real correlation between baseball skills. And so probably my,

I don't know, based on what Kevin told me, I wouldn't have thought this. I thought I was expecting the answer to be very different. My hypothesis was the answer would be very different, but based on what he told me, I would guess that there are very few players in the world who are good enough to defend at a major league level who are overlooked because they can't hit. Yeah. Okay. A question from Dan.

This might be a very quick one. I don't know. We'll see. He says, I stumbled upon a great tweet this afternoon from someone named Cespedes MVP that read Duda costed the Mets 10 to 15 games this year in the first half. The pitchers were pitching games and Duda was supposed to produce. Not only does this fit into the category of totally misunderstanding how to value players,

not to mention grammar, it speaks to the general hatred Mets fans have for Lucas Duda, despite the fact that he has a case to be one of the top 10 first basemen in baseball. With that said, what player do you think receives the most irrational hate from their fan base? Maybe the answer is Duda, as Ken Davidoff recently wrote an article entitled, Lucas Duda, why do Mets fans hate me? My favorite, Duda rationalization for his lack of fan love. Quote, maybe I've got a weird face. He does.

So is there any argument for anyone other than Joey Votto? Dude is a pretty good ball player Yeah Well, I thought you were going to go with Joe Maurer Yeah, I guess so But I mean, he was beloved when he was great And there are people who don't like him now Or people who hold the position switch and the concussions against him for some reason.

But I don't know. He's no longer a great player. So if you want to be mad about him not being great anymore, that's not uncommon. Yeah, Vado's a very good answer. This would probably be a question that would be better answered by literally every listener than us.

Everybody has an idea. Everybody who's associated with a team or who follows a team knows the player who is irrationally hated by their team. It's got to be more common for a player to be irrationally loved than irrationally hated, right? I don't know. I mean, it was part of kind of BP orthodoxy in the mid-aughts that great players were often unfairly blamed for their team's failings. That's true.

That, for instance, you know, Adam Dunn would be blamed for his team's not winning because he struck out even though he was the best hitter on the team. on the team and so just in the sense that the people who are prone to badly misjudge a player are also prone to only know two players on the team and therefore they're going to take it out on the best like they're likely you know not gonna know who you know oduble herrera is yeah so yeah but probably i mean probably both ways it probably goes both ways yeah it definitely does i wonder if one is more common than the other but like so so for instance like hayward was a guy who i think we all generally acknowledge was was dramatically underrated but, but never hated. I mean, if you're a really good player, you have to, I mean, it has to be a special confluence of circumstances for you to be hated.

You could maybe be overrated. Maybe that's the same thing as hated in most cases. But if you're good, if you're helping the team win, that's already a pretty big point in your favor for most fans. So you have to really do something special for fans not to like you. A-Rod? Well, yeah, I don't know if that's irrational hate. Well, at this point, I wouldn't say it's irrational.

But at earlier points in his career, probably, yeah. It's hard to say. I will say I just love David Ross. Yeah, even the guy who emailed us to say it's crazy that David Ross is still on the team says, I love David Ross. So there are a lot of guys like that. Because there are more really nice people than really terrible people i think generally and if you're a really nice person then you're more likely to be irrationally loved has the hated have are fewer

players hated like i'm thinking about the team that i follow the most closely and and whose fan base i follow the most closely i and maybe it's that they've won three world series in the last six years but i can't think of an unpopular giant. Yeah, that's probably not a fair representation. Probably not. But is it plausible that hated players have become less common? It might be because there's always a backlash if you write something about how so-and-so is not getting the job done. I mean, if you write the Joey Votto column now,

you get more responses to that than the original article. So you're maybe more likely to be shouted down, chastised for your bad opinion than you were at one point. All right, Play Index? Sure. So this is a pretty simple Play Index. It's a classic example of testing a myth to see whether it is true. So you know that Derek Jeter is famous for going the other way.

And I just wanted to see whether he was actually good at it. All right. So I went to baseball reference play index, So I went to Baseball Reference Play Index, and I looked at the split finder for opposite field hits, opposite field balls in play. I limited it to right-handed batters, and I set the minimum plate appearances at 362. And the reason I did that is because that gave me 299 results. And Baseball Reference Play Index shows 300. And I didn't want to have to click see more.

So I have 299 players. I don't exactly know how far back Play Index's batted ball location goes. My guess is 88 might be more reasonable. At least 88, I think. Yeah, okay. So let's say 88, modern era. Yeah, that makes sense. Juan Samuel's on here. That seems like an 88 in tempo play.

I don't know if there's a more... Who is the most 1988 player? Isn't it Juan Samuel? It's definitely either Juan Samuel, Vaughn Hayes, or Luis Polonia. It's clearly... Errol Boston. either Juan Samuel Von Hayes or Luis Polonia. It's clearly... It might be Darryl Boston.

All right. I feel like I had more Darryl Boston baseball cards than any other player. I don't know why that was. I wonder who I had more baseball cards than any other player i don't know why that was i wonder who i had more baseball cards than any other player daryl boston who who played for the white socks that's the great thing about daryl boston by the way lifelong white socks yeah uh all right dad hat we're losing it ben we're losing this episode going back to playing decks okay all right so i have 299 right-handed batters by their ops on balls hit the other way now jeter is not you know generally near the top of ops leaderboards he was aboards. Much of his value came from his ability to play a gold glove shortstop.

But he wasn't a power hitter, so I wouldn't necessarily expect him to be at the top of this list, but I'd expect him to be fairly near the top of this list. So, OPS by balls hit the other way. 299 batters. Derek Jeter, myth-busting or not, number three. So OPS by balls hit the other way, 299 batters. Derek Jeter, myth-busting or not, number three. He's the third best hitter to balls hit the other way.

So this is actually accurate. Derek Jeter hit 443 on balls hit the other way. He was actually pretty much a superstar on balls hit the other way. He is not the best, though. The best is Julio Franco, who in his career hit 479 on balls in play. His OPS was 1191. That is the best. That is better than Paul Goldschmidt, who's number five. It's better than Manny Ramirez, who's number nine. It's better than Mike Piazza, who's number 16.

It's better than Miguel Cabrera Who's not only number 21 But has a reputation for being extremely good Hitting the other way Julio Franco, the greatest other way hitter From the right side, ever After his bat slowed down when he turned 45 He then racked up opposite field hits For the next decade or so

So that's kind of what I was I was wondering whether there's actually any relevance to this split. I'm not sure if there is or not. Jose Hernandez. Do you remember Jose Hernandez? Yeah. Yeah. Jose Hernandez is number two on this.

And in fact, by split relative to the league, he's actually number one. He is the best other way hitter in hit way hitter in modern history, the other way. And, I mean, Jose Hernandez is a guy I don't ever think about. To the extent I do think of him, he is the guy who struck out more than anybody else during his era. He was a guy who would hit. He was like Fernando Tatis, basically.

I would put those two guys together. He struck out a ton, hit some home runs, wasn't a great player, wasn't a bad player, but was, in a slightly different way of looking at it, the best opposite field hitter ever, which is weird because when you think about the strikeout guy, you think about maybe a guy who's selling out, who's like a dead pole hitter. And Hernandez was anything but he was

apparently i didn't know this but apparently was this massive opposite field hitter so i don't know if this matters i don't know anything about it so then i went down to the bottom i looked at number 299 see whether there's anything there and the worst opposite field hitter, strangely by a lot, like a pretty big margin from 298, is Chris Young, the not-tall one, who had a.356 OPS on balls hit the other way. So that's Cheater had an.1122 OPS on balls hit the other way. Chris Young had a.356 OPS on balls hit the other way. And a lot of O ops is actually just how

many strikeouts and walks you have but these are this is obviously on only balls put in play and so it removes strikeouts and and walks so on balls put in play which you don't see a large spread on generally speaking like you for instance on babbitt you don't really ever large spread on, generally speaking. For instance, on BABIP, you don't really ever, ever, ever see anybody with a BABIP higher than 350 or a BABIP lower than 270. It's a pretty small spread. We're conditioned to believe that, yeah, sure, there's some variation between players, but it's not that big we have nonetheless found a babbitt driven split whereby chris young is about as good as the average pitcher and derrick cheater is about as good as babe ruth uh-huh which is

interesting like i don't have a second part of this ben like i don't know i don't know but it's interesting it is okay all right matt trueblood you have been you have been commissioned to write about this all right well i'm glad we could burnish the legend of derek jeter a little more yeah all right use the coupon code bp when you subscribe to the play index get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. It's not like – by the way, it's not like Chris Young is a bad hitter in his career. And it's not like there's even a is the fourth worst. Joe Creedy is the seventh worst. But it's not a clear distinction. For instance, besides Chris Young, good ball player, quality major league career, Josh Willingham is the second worst.

Richard Hidalgo, good hitter, is the fifth worst. Edwin Encarnacion is the 11th worst. Mike Lowell, 14th worst. And then if you go to the top, we've already established. Jose Hernandez is the 11th worst Mike Lowell, 14th worst And then if you go to the top, we've already established Jose Hernandez is the second best Phil Nevin is the fourth best It's not like Phil Nevin is the fourth best hitter of the post-88 Mike Morse is sixth

Mariano friggin' Duncan is seventh Mariano Duncan is seventh I don't even know what this means, Ben I have no idea. Like, I feel like the correlation here between this and, like, good at baseball is, like,.14. And, like, there are very few splits. Like, this is not a totally absurd split. This is not like I was like, well, who's best on two and two when there's a runner on second

relative to how they are on two and one with a runner on first? It's not like I created this completely absurd split. It's balls hit the other way. That's a big part of what a baseball player does. And yet I have found a completely nonsensical order of baseball players. Huh. Yeah, that's weird. All right. Matt, you're on it. All right. Okay, Stuart says,

That way. Does the concept of the Ken Phelps All-Star still exist? Or is there some idea that front offices have enough numbers to judge players so efficiently these days that there aren't any overturned rocks with that previously unnoticed upside left? About 10 years ago, it still seemed like you could look at the International League leaderboard

and see a player like Marco Scudero then confidently say, I bet if somebody like Billy Bean snaps him up, he'll be a pretty good player. Do you guys think this is true with a guy like Matt Haig today? Or are they now seen as quad A guys who live on the back end of rosters? Well, let me tell you about Jarrett Groob.

Yeah, let me direct you to Carson Sestouli's output over the last few years. Ken Phelps, I mean, let me double check, but Ken Phelps did not, it's not like Ken Phelps was in AAA, right? Ken Phelps i mean ken felt let me let me double check but ken phelps did not it's not like ken phelps was in triple a right ken phelps was playing he just wasn't playing very often yeah i don't know maybe he was delayed also he yeah i guess that's true he was delayed ken phelps was playing regularly in triple a at age 25 and at age 27, and semi-regularly at age 28 and 29. All right, and 31. All right.

No, no, no. Those are major leagues. But yes, at 28 and 27. Ken Phelps was delayed. 100 game season until he was 29. All right. Protestation revoked. Okay. Ken Phelps' baseball reference picture.

Wow. Okay. Ken Phelps' baseball reference picture. Wow. So I think there are still instances where players get... That is the longest mustache that I've ever seen. That is a four and a half inch half inch mustache yeah it's got good wingspan good hair span so i don't think there are as many of these guys there are definitely guys who get blocked for whatever reason or maybe their team underrates them for some reason but you can't look at a leaderboard and say that teams haven't noticed anymore. You can't say that they are just not looking at the same column of stats that you're looking at. They're all looking at it, and they have more information than you do.

And they have every player everywhere ranked more accurately than you do. So I don't know that there is such a thing anymore really why do we think ken phelps was overlooked i mean it's not like it's not like ken phelps was five six it's not it's not like there was anything i mean like i'm not trying to make a point here i don't i don't know i think the answer batting average on base percentage. Oh, just that, right? Okay. So he drew a ton of walks. I mean, when he was 25 though, for instance, when he was 25, he was in AAA, he hit 294, he had 23 home runs. Ken Phelps was a power hitter in the minors who, it did take a little time for his batting average to catch up

but like when he was 28 he was in triple a he in 300 at bats he had 24 homers and batted 341 so yeah although i guess if you're only looking at batting average and on base percentage the fact that he hit 294 and slugged 530 as a 25 year old is you know maybe moderately impressive but not like we need to call this guy up immediately but if you look at his 456 on base percentage then maybe you would be yeah i'm not probably qualified to talk about ken phelps well it's interesting that he is listed at 209 pounds That's oddly precise I wonder how many, what percentage of players on baseball reference

Do you think are not a multiple of five? Look, Ken Phelps was a left-handed batter Who hit nearly 300 with power in AAA at 25 And didn't get almost a single at bat and in the majors until he was 28 until three years later I feel like there's like I feel like this is a mustache thing there had there the the reason I say I'm not qualified talking about Ken Phelps because I can't look at just the minor league stats and find the stat head reason he didn't play i don't feel like i under i don't feel like i know the full story of all the reasons that nobody gave ken

phelps a chance well he hit 294 that one year but yeah hit 265 the year before that 247 the year before that 195 the year before that so he wasn't always a high average hitter and when he came up in a in a i don't know in a very short sample in 81 he hit 136 so you think it's just a stats thing if look if ken phelps had looked like justin maxwell my go-to greatest looking ball player of all time. Would he have been a major leaguer at 24? Or are we saying this is a completely a didn't know which stats to look at kind of thing? I think almost completely different stats, or at least that I think that's the... Well, it's partially a tools thing, I think. Like he wasn't flashy.

He didn't look like a superstar so it's it's partially that and partially that people didn't look past that and see what he did do well so yeah i think it's probably a combination of both either way i i don't think that there are really ken phelps's anymore you know maybe for a year here and there there's some guy who should be playing who isn't playing but if he's not there's probably there's you know probably usually some good reason for it i mean you you just you can't really make the case that teams just aren't looking at the on base percentage column or something or aren't looking at his strikeout rate or you know don't see that he had a good FIP when he had a high ERA or whatever he would have said 10 years ago or 15 years ago.

It just doesn't hold anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's fun to think that the industry is dumb. And even if you think the industry is dumb, I mean, the point is that there are 30 teams. And even if the industry is dumb, all 30 are obviously not dumb. And so really, no matter what weirdness you have about you, no matter how redheaded you are or how how long your mustache is, we all know that of those 30 teams, there are some portion of them that just do not care about your mustache.

And so for that reason, probably Ken Phelps's all over the sport have been rescued, even if only by the outlier teams among them. Although, you know, as we also know, the outlier teams among them are actually the mainstream and the outliers. In fact, of course, you can get stuck in a system. If you're pre-agency, you can get stuck in a system if you're pre-agency. Oh, sure. You can get stuck. Someone would still trade for you maybe. Yeah, that has much less to do with an inability to recognize the value of a walk and just the fact that sometimes life deals you lemons.

Justin Maxwell, by the way, handsome man. He played for the Giants last year and played quite poorly. And I went to look and see how he did in the minors after he got optioned and he apparently never got options so justin maxwell might be done oh that's a shame that man can sure fill out a uniform can i request that as next week's play index percentage of players whose listed weights are not divisible by five and whether that has changed over the years? There was some talk on the Facebook page about the Hunter Pence full house appearance. And when I saw, I think the thing that surprised me about his listing was that he was not listed

with a multiple of five on his weight. i since most are i i thought that looked suspicious yeah he's but he's 220 now he's 220 now i'm trying to find this i i can't believe i'm saying i'm trying to find the scoreboard that appeared on full house fuller house fuller house did you watch fuller house nope let's see here. Yeah, wait, 218. They had him listed at 218, which seems suspicious to me. Yeah. All right. We really should end the show here.

But, man, Eric Hartman sent a really cool question. Go ahead. Whatever. It was related to our Ken Phelps All-Star question. Just go. He says, how well would Mike Trout hit if he had not yet played in the majors? That is to say, he'd have been the same generational talent for the last four years, He says, how well would Mike Trout hit if he had not yet played in the majors? That is to say, he'd have been the same generational talent for the last four years,

but he did it all in AAA. So essentially, what is the value of reps versus big league pitching? So in this scenario, Mike Trout is a Ken Phillips all-star. I actually have had this question in my head for a little while. Not about Trout specifically, but this question in my head for a little while, not about trout specifically, but this question in my head. And I have, uh, it took a little while, but I figured out the way to research it. And so I'm, I'm going to do it someday. It's on the long list of things to, to write. Um, I do think that I have figured out the methodology to answer this question but i i think for trout specifically and for triple a specifically i would not consider it to be particularly relevant i think if if you told

me that trout was doing uh weather reports on uh on uh on uh you know upn or whatever network he's doing weather reports on for those four years, I think that it would be relevant. But I general, I don't think the difference between AAA and the majors is enough that I would, cause you know, like I looked at not that long ago, I looked at how batters are doing on 95 plus mile per hour pitches relative to how they were doing however many years ago. And I found no evidence that they were improving. So if I had seen evidence that they were improving, I would say that definitely there's a case that exposure to this level of pitching or this level of velocity is an important part of development of getting better. But since I didn't,

I think that there's probably a point where you simply cannot hit that pitch, no matter how many times you've seen it. And I don't, I don't think that the difference between AAA and the majors is big enough that I would expect the reps to be all that relevant. Yeah mean he he only played 20 games in triple a 93 plate appearances and it was the same year that he became the best player in baseball true he essentially hadn't spent it and that was i guess the year when he was sick at the start of the year and so he came up late also yeah sick mike trout playing in triple a for 20 games was amazing and then he came up and was amazing in the majors immediately i don't think he was technically i don't think he was sick during the triple he was sick in the offseason wait and he was yeah he was sick in spring training i think

by by the time he went triple a he was healthy yeah but he essentially had no seasoning, no AAA experience, and he was still amazing immediately. So I guess there's no reason to think that if he had played four more seasons in AAA that he would be any worse when he finally made the jump. I think if Mike Trout had for some weird reason been, you know, because like immigration wouldn't let him in, was stuck playing like, you know, in the Dominican Winter League this whole time or something like that, I think he would still basically be just as good as he is. I think if he were doing like a Cameron Crowe thing and he'd been undercover as a high schooler for the last four years and then he tried to join the majors, yeah, probably. So then what's the answer to that question?

I guess do we think that a coach at the major league level ever made Mike Trout better? Well, I don't think it's – no. Well, I don't think it's – no. In fact, I can tell you explicitly that I talked to the Angels director, ex-director of player development, I think. I mean, I know I talked to him. He's the one who told me this, about Mike Trout and his development. And he might not have told me.

Someone else might have. But the consensus was like yeah like the the the player development department like basically it's no credit for trout because he just showed up and he was amazing like we like just he was immediately better than we thought he was and there was very little done like they they worked on his throwing like yeah that's it he was just awesome so i wouldn't say coaching however exposure i mean if you've never seen a 91 mile an hour fastball which as a high He was just awesome So I wouldn't say coaching However, exposure I mean, if you've never seen a 91 mile an hour fastball Which as a high schooler in New Jersey He probably hadn't seen very many

It probably takes a little bit of time to adjust to that Or to adjust to the movement on a major league slider So I would be comfortable saying it would take him some time Yeah, there's some level If he had been stuck at a certain level would be comfortable saying it would take him some time yeah there's some level at you know if he had been stuck at a certain level it would have affected his major league performance if he had gone straight from one to the other but i don't think triple a is that level i don't know if double a is that level maybe maybe a ball is all right so now though let's let me give you a counter evidence or a counter argument.

Josh Hamilton, he's drafted. He's an extremely high-profile draft pick, first overall, drafted out of high school. And if you were to draw a trajectory for Josh Hamilton on a graph, you'd have it going up, right? Like he would get better as he had more exposure to minor league pitching and as he got bigger and as he got better coaching, then by the time he's 25, you expect he's going to be like kind of a star, right? Like that's the ideal.

And so you have exactly that graph except remove the exposure to minor league pitching remove the coaching and still he ends up at the exact same place yeah and so that makes the argument that this is it is nothing but age and strength that basically you have to have a certain amount of strength particularly i would say lower body strength to be a successful major leaguer. And that what we think of as player development, particularly for hitters, is 90% waiting for them to get bigger, waiting for them to get stronger. And that the coaching is important in only a sliver of that. Yeah. Obviously, experience is important, but maybe it's more important

during some formative period. Maybe it's more important for you to see tons of pitches when you're a teenager than when you're 21 or something. It's possible. So I don't know. That has to play a role. But maybe when you're as freakishly talented

as Trowder Hamilton, it plays less of a role. It's really under, I mean, it's, it's crazy. Like Josh Hamilton did not play for four years. Like, it's not like he was just like in and out or like he was injured. Like he didn't play, he was smoking crack. He was poisoning himself that entire time. Yeah, for four years.

And then he shows up and he's exactly where you thought he would be. Yeah. Not a comeback player of the year, though. Still on that, huh? Yeah, still bothering me. All right. Okay, that is finally it for today. Quick announcement, the Sonoma Stompers,

the team that we worked for last summer and wrote a book about, which, by the way, is out in a couple months from now and you can pre-order it. They are looking for interns. So if you go to stompersbaseball.com, click on jobs, you will see a listing for four different types of interns, digital marketing, communications and community relations, operations manager, baseball operations. And we will also post a link to this in the Facebook group. But basically, you have to be free from middle of March to middle of September, or as much of that time as possible and have some free time. And they're just part time positions,

but you get to work with the famous Theo Fightmaster, who you will learn to love if you read our book. I am applying for all the jobs. So you will learn to love if you read our book. I am applying for all the jobs, so you also have to beat me. Okay. And the site started by Effectively Wild listeners, Banished to the Pen. Banishedtothepen.com is doing its annual March Madness-style bracket of Effectively Wild podcast highlights or memes or sayings. So you can go over there, and they're seeding everything and breaking it down.

And it's fun for us to read and probably fun for people to listen to this podcast. So go check that out. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. We will be back tomorrow resuming our preview podcast with the Detroit Tigers. All right. That was a fun one.

I was just going to say, I thought that would be a fun one if you still tweeted. If I still tweeted, I would definitely tweet that. That was one of my favorite ones in a while.