Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 840: The Underrated Trout Edition

Episode Date: March 16, 2016

Ben and Sam announce this year’s Effectively Wild fantasy game, “Beat PECOTA,” then answer listener emails about Mike Trout, game theory in the amateur draft, baseball caps, Goose Gossage, and more.

Hey everyone, before we begin, we have an announcement. Actually, it's less an announcement than it is an appeal. We've put this off as long as possible, but to keep the show going in its current format, we need some support from, as the NPR people say, listeners like you. To that end, we've set up a show page on Patreon, which is a website where podcast hosts and other kinds of creators can solicit a small monthly stipend from people who enjoy what they do and want them to keep doing it. We'll keep this less obtrusive than an NPR pledge drive, but I want to take a minute to explain why we're asking for your help. Sam and I have never been paid to do this podcast. When we started, going on four years and 850 episodes ago, the show was just something we decided to do on top

of our actual jobs. And when I left Baseball Perspectives about 350 episodes ago, I decided to keep doing it because I enjoy talking to Sam and directing with all of you. And because I didn't want to be the bad guy who kills a podcast people like and also probably because I'm bad at business. It takes a lot of hours to do a daily podcast. It's not just the talking, planning and scheduling, but also the editing, uploading and posting all the boring but necessary behind the scenes stuff that happens between me calling Sam and you hearing our conversation is a one man effort.

And that man is me over the years. Our episodes have gotten a lot longer and our audience has gotten a lot larger, which means that our hosting costs are higher and production takes more time. Our play index sponsorship no longer comes close to covering those costs. And while the show sounds much better than it did before, that quality has come at cost to my sanity and sleep schedule. Our goal in asking you to support us on Patreon

is to make it feasible for us to preserve the podcast in its current form, to keep it free to download so that anyone can access it, and ideally to do both of those things without subjecting you to the same ads for stamps and audiobooks and daily fantasy leagues that you skip past on other podcasts. We know that not everyone has money to spare on a podcast, but we hope that those of you who do have some disposable income will consider devoting some of your entertainment dollars to us.

If you're a regular listener, you're getting a lot of hours out of Effectively Wild. This month, for example, we're doing 24 episodes and producing something like 18 hours of audio. As Sam has often observed, we all talk about baseball to avoid dwelling on our impending deaths, which means that we're giving you 18 hours this month during which you're not contemplating your mortality. We hope that's worth something. So please go to Patreon, that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N, patreon.com slash effectively wild and become a patron of the show. You can give as little as a couple dollars a month or as much as the complete contents of your bank account.

We've also added a few rewards for higher monthly donations in case the satisfaction of having helped We'll see you next time. and gives us this platform, but the majority of the money you contribute will go to me and Sam so that we can keep doing a daily show while earning enough to eat avocados and dinners at diners in the stupidly expensive metropolitan markets where we've both made the dumb decision to live. Thanks for making it possible for the podcast to survive. And now please enjoy the episode you were actually hoping to hear. We are here. I love you

And we hope that you love me too Good morning and welcome to episode 840 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus presented by our Patreon supporters and the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. It's great to be here. Yeah, and hopefully we will continue to be here. I am flattered. I'm sure we're both flattered by the Patreon support so far. So if you have donated, we thank you. And it's nice to know that people want the show to continue. So we're doing a listener email show today. And I figured

we could start unless you want to banter about something else first. I do. Okay, go ahead. It's not so much a banter. It's an announcement during the banter section uh i am today uh happy to starting a sam miller only patreon account uh no but i am kicking off this year's effectively wild fantasy game oh yeah i read an email about this it sounds exciting yes so this is not many of you were involved in the relievers only league a couple years ago which was fun this is a totally different one this is the beat pakoda challenge okay yeah so all you have to do is pick a bunch of players you think pakoda is too high on and pick a bunch of players you think pakoda is too low on and if you get more right than everybody else then you are the winner of the beat pakoda challenge now

there are a couple of things about this, and the rules are all spelled out. There are only three paragraphs, short paragraphs, so you can read the rules before you pick your teams. But one of the things that I like about this game is that you can pick one player or you can pick 300 players. It does not matter. That is part of the game,

is determining how far down your confidence levels you want to go before you stop trying. And if you get one wrong, it costs you slightly more than if you get one right. So there is a penalty to overextending yourself to, um, if you're a fourth outfielder trying to cast yourself as a third outfielder, you might get stretched is what I'm saying. you might get stretched is what i'm saying this is uh open to everybody not just bp subscribers uh however uh you do need to register at site with a free subscription at least which only takes 30 seconds just so that we know who you are it makes it much easier to keep track of people for the scoreboard for the leaderboards and it keeps you from playing 3 000 times which would be annoying and it keeps you from playing 3,000 times,

which would be annoying for everybody. The other thing, though, is that you do need to, well, if you want to do this well, you probably need to have access to Pakoda, and Pakoda is available in the Baseball Perspectives annual, so we are using those projections. So if you have an annual, if you have access to an annual, you can use those projections and skim through and go ah that looks too high or that looks too low and you can pick that guy you can also see pakoda projections on the site or get the pakoda spreadsheet but that is for bp

subscribers only and so um you need to probably do one of those things if you want to go and play probably do one of those things. If you want to go and play blindly, I don't respect you, but you're welcome to. We just ask as a favor to me. I actually don't mind if you do that, but as a favor to me, we do ask you to check the box that says I am playing blindly because I want to know who is who when I'm looking at these results, but otherwise it is not held against you. So I assume Ben will post the link to this. You have until the season starts, we will freeze the teams on the eve of the season and standings will be published when the season starts.

And I will probably, my guess is I will probably write a few things about this as it goes, because I'm not interested in who wins or loses among you or among me, but I am very interested to see, you know, who, who gets picked and how good we are and things of that nature. So please play. It'd be fun. And don't just play. I don't say please for that. Just play, just do it. Don't grovel. Right. So is there a prize or is this for for bragging rights for pride uh we haven't talked about a prize but sure probably something yeah probably something yeah figure it we'll figure out a prize let me know if you play and uh let me know what prizes would be appealing to you

but if you play you're already playing yeah have you picked any players yet i have oh have you picked all your players uh well i can change you can change your roster up until it starts so i've picked some i've picked like nine but partly just to test the format i was gonna ask how many if you were willing to divulge that because if i play there there probably won't be i don't know the more the more players you pick the probably the more delusional you are. But maybe not. Maybe you're brilliant. I genuinely have no idea what the correct strategy is for this game.

I'm really eager to see what the mean and median picks are. A number of picks are. Yeah. And yeah, Wade Davis is a freebie. So I would just recommend go pick Wade Davis. Maybe the prize should be that you replace Pakoda in 2017. If you can beat it. Maybe.

Yeah, sure. Although, yeah, it is easier to, when Pakoda gives you a number, it's easier to pick the over under. Of course. And someone might end up looking really smart just by chance. All right. Okay. So some emails, you never know what you're going to get when you send us an email. You might get no response at all, you might get a written response, you might get an audio response had drafted him? And you wrote a really interesting article about this, even though half the comments were about

how you wrote should have instead of should have intentionally, of course, the actual article was very interesting also. And it revealed, and you kind of wrote this in your conclusion, but I was thinking this as I was reading it, that we have underrated Mike Trout. Despite the fact that every listener email show we've ever done has had a question about Mike Trout, we have somehow underrated him. Do you want to summarize the results? So yeah, the results are basically that in roughly a third of seasons, Mike Trout changes your postseason status from either not making the postseason to making the postseason. And this is Mike Trout instead of your actual pick. Yeah, right. And so this is Mike Trout instead of, you know, say the number four overall pick who should be pretty good. He's not he's Tony Sanchez, but he should be good. Some number

of them should be good and a few of them are good. So yeah, so this is Mike Trout instead of Shelby Miller. This is Mike Trout instead of AJ Pollock. It's Mike Trout instead of Matt Perk. It's Mike Trout. By the way, I do now, if I ever happen to be a child again and I appear on a talent show, my talent is going to be recounting the first round of the 2009 draft in order. Wouldn't that be cute as a button? And so, yeah, so replacing them with Trout. In a third of seasons, it changes your postseason status from either not making it to making it

or winning the wild card to winning the division. That is not even including all the seasons when teams made it anyway. So if you put Mike Trout on a team and you don't really know anything about that team, except that it has Mike Trout, their playoff odds seem to be something close to 60%, just for having Mike Trout, which is pretty good. The thing that stood out to me as I was reading

was that it's really hard to be very bad if you have Mike Trout. It's almost impossible. Like the Astros would have still managed to be very bad have Mike Trout, it's almost impossible. Like the, the Astros would have still managed to be very bad with Mike Trout. But other than that, every team during this period that you looked at, pretty much every team had a good season or multiple good seasons if they had had Mike Trout. So yeah, just starting with Mike Trout, you should probably be good. Yeah, I think only 19 of the 92 seasons were losing seasons. And those include the Astros. I mean, these are teams that were drafting in the

first half of the first round. And so those are teams like the Astros and the Marlins and the Rockies and the Padres teams that we think of as being very bad. But yeah, like you say, pretty much every team except for the Astros. Well, the Astros would have been really good in their fourth year with Trout. And probably the Rockies don't really have a good season even with Trout. The Rockies had like an 84 win in there or something. They did have an 84 in a four win. But every other team has, like you're essentially recession proof if you have Trout. Like nobody else is consistently bad with Mike Trout.

And some teams, like if the Orioles had drafted Mike trout instead of Matt Hobgood, they would have won, you know, with this simplistic math in the last four games, four years, they would have won 102, 95, 105, and 91 made the playoffs all four years. You're talking about the Baltimore Orioles being like a dynastic level of awesome. If, if they had just drafted Trout instead of this broken down high school pitcher. And so, yeah, so let's see.

Yeah, if you are a team that doesn't make the playoffs, like if you take an average non-playoff team and give them Mike Trout, then, yeah, and if you take an average non-playoff team and give them Mike Trout, their playoff odds are like 40% just by having Mike Trout, then yeah. And if you take an average non-playoff team and give them Mike Trout, their playoff odds are like 40% just, just by having Mike Trout. So, uh, yeah, Mike Trout's a pretty big deal. Yeah. And as you also concluded, the angels have maybe unforgivably wasted him to this point. Well, I can forgive them for it. Yeah, we can forgive it. We're pretty forgiving guys, but yeah, every, as I put it, every, almost every franchise in baseball's trajectory

over the past four years would have been radically different if they just drafted Mike Trout. The one team that that is not true of in any way is the Angels, who essentially have exactly the same results with Trout as they would have had without him if you simply removed the war. They finished in third place one year. They would have finished in third place, even with nine fewer wins in 2012, they actually finished in third place. If you took away nine wins, they still

would have finished in third place. In 2013, they finished in third place. If you took away 10 wins, they would have finished in fourth. Uh, in 2014, they won the division. If you take away nine wins, they still would have won the division and presumably still could have been swept in the first round as they were and then in 2015 they finished in third place if you take away 10 wins they still finish or they finish in fourth so just by this weird fluke of math mike trout's value to the Angels has been less than like the one team that got it right. The only team that got it right has been just strangely inconvenienced into not being able to benefit by from it at all. Yeah. All right. Well, despite the cliche about baseball and one player not being

able to carry a team and put a team on his back and all that sort of stuff, Mike Trout is pretty close to that kind of player. Mike Trout is pretty close to that kind of player. So I will link to Sam's article. You should go read it and then leave a comment about how he said should have instead of should have. Okay. Let us take a question. Well, this is sort of a Mike Trout adjacent question. It's about the draft. It's from David. He says, put on your game theory hats for this question. It's the day of the first round of the baseball draft. And before the first pick is made, omniscient baseball God enters a room with a sealed envelope in his hand. Inside the envelope,

omniscient baseball God explains is a name of a draft eligible player who will be in the MLB all-star game in five years. No other information is given about the player, no position, no word on whether five years from now marks his first All-Star appearance or his last. He may be a future Hall of Famer, or he may have just backed into the All-Star game because his team had no other good choices to send to the game. But he is a bird in the hand. It's guaranteed not to be completely wasted, Brian Taylor level pick, and it's guaranteed that in five years time, he's not just an MLB role player. Omniscient Baseball God tells the teams that at their draft pick, and it's guaranteed that in five years time, he's not just an MLB role player. Omniscient Baseball God tells the teams that at their draft pick, the team can have this player now. The player will sign for slot money, so signability is not an issue. If a team passes on the envelope and the player they draft ends up being the player in the envelope, they are told to

choose a different player. The envelope player would remain in the draft pool. Clearly, there are some years when players are thought of as can't-miss future All-Stars. The 2010 draft, I'm guessing the Nationals would not have taken the envelope with Bryce Harper in their sights. However, there's a chance that Bryce Harper is in the envelope and that by passing on the envelope, they lose the rights to him. So sticking with your scouting reports might not always be the best decision. For every David Price, there is a Luke Hochaver. For every Carlos Correa, there is a Timothy Beckham. My question is, how often, if ever, would the number one team disregard all of their scouting reports and take the name in the envelope?

If your answer is never, at what point of the draft do you see the team taking the envelope? Would a typical number two team take the name, number three, et cetera? I'm going to see if I can do a play index that will help me answer this, but it would be much easier to answer this question or I guess, yeah, I guess it would be much easier to answer this question if you knew whether it was a high school or a college player. Because if you told me that I was going to draft a guy who was going to be an all-star at age 23 versus you told me he was going to be an all-star at 26 or 27. That's a huge difference to me. I would guess that the career value of players who are all-stars at 23

is significantly higher than the career value of players who are all-stars at 26. Yeah. So let's see. I'm looking at 23-year-old all-stars since 2000. Okay. Same fare. All right. So, oh my goodness, there's a lot there's too many well there are 244 players who made the all-star game at age 23 in that period and there are

actually there are 366 who made it at 26 so yeah the premium is greater if he's 23 because you know you have him at a he's he's at a higher percentile for major leaguers and guys who made it at 26 now granted i could probably cherry pick but joe creedy brad hopp uh alcides escobar junior spivey gabby sanchez ty wigginton geo soto gary matthews, Felipe Lopez, John Buck, Jose Lopez, Alex Avila, Brandon Inge, Dimitri Young, Ben Grieve. These are Hank Blaylock, Alexi Ramirez. These are, you know, not star. Wait a minute. Brock Holt?

Yeah. So these are. What were we doing last summer, Ben? So these are clearly worse than your typical top pick in the draft. All right, and so then I'm going to, let's see, 23. Let me see if I can find. I'm going to, as best I can, do the exact same thing with 23-year-olds and read the worst names that I can come up with for 23-year-olds.

Bronson Arroyo, still very good. Justin Dukeshire, Danny's Baez, Jason Marquis, John Garland, John Buck again. Do John Bucks. Glenn Perkins, Jim Johnson, Edward Mujica. I don't know. Maybe there's not a... They seem like better players, right? Maybe.

Hard to tell. Hector Santiago, Neftali Feliz. Maybe not. More pitchers, though. Yeah yeah more relievers all right anyway it's mathematically it's an you cannot argue against me forget the things about the names uh so yeah if we if we had more time it'd be fairly easy to not fairly easy it'd take some time but it'd be relatively easy to figure out what the expected war career war is of a player who makes an all-star game in one randomly selected season right particularly at those ages if you figure there's a 50 chance he's a 23 year old and a 50

chance he's a 26 year old although i guess it's more likely that you're getting the 26 year old and the 50% chance he's a 26 year old. Although I guess it's more likely that you're getting the 26 year old because he's more likely to be the all-star. So you have a bigger pool of guys. Yeah. And I would say that certainly now, at least when like 80 players make the all-star team in some, in some way, I would think that the average all-star is not really that much better than an average major league player.

Well, the average all-star is. The bottom all-star isn't. Yeah, right. You're talking about the average all-star is the 40th best player in baseball. There's 800 guys. Right. Well, I'm talking about average major league player.

I mean, what percentage of average major league player, this is a different question, but what percentage of average major league players do you think makes an all-star team what percentage of average major leaguers make the all-star team yeah once at some point yeah but the if i tell you a guy made it though in one specific year in the future that doesn't mean he only made it once. Right. He made, he isn't, he made it at least once, which puts him in a pool of players that includes Barry Bonds and does not include Bobby Estalaya. I mean, clearly the pool is much, much, much, much, much, much better. It doesn't guarantee you anything. You could get the worst all-star, but you know, you realize that you're picking from like, yeah, I mean're picking From I think that

If you don't The other thing is if you don't get the all-star year Out of 23 Now not every great player Makes an all-star game at 26 Or at 23 Most do at 26 So if you figure it's a 50-50 chance

That I get the 26 to the 23 year old If you don't get an all-star that year You're almost certainly getting a non-superstar Right? Yes, right 50-50 chance that I got the 26th or the 23-year-old. If you don't get an all-star that year, you're almost certainly getting a non-superstar, right? Yes, right. So if your goal is to get a superstar, like you're not, there's not a lot of upside. To me, this is like, I would say that to answer this question in the simplest terms possible, this is to me like getting 85 cents on the price is right big wheel. And so, you so you know could you could you imagine like if you were really like if you were really hyper and you just got caught up in the moment could you

imagine maybe spinning again i don't know you'd be stupid but maybe but to me the odds of improving are kind of along those lines yeah well it would be a little high 75 or 80 cents. A number one pick team is never going to take this, right? Because as we've talked about in the past, I mean, in the way that most people think they're above average drivers, probably most baseball teams think they're above average decision makers or scouting departments or whatever it is. And if they've had months to mull over their first pick selection and put all the time and erase any doubts they have about that guy and anyone you draft in the first round,

probably you're drafting because multiple people in your draft room believe with virtual certainty that he's going to be an all-star at some point. And obviously some of them will turn out to be wrong. But I would guess if you have the number one pick, you have at least talked yourself into getting a guaranteed all-star, even though you should maybe know better. I think that you're right that nobody would take it with a number one pick and just eyeballing it. I think they should. So I'm looking at the last 25 years here. And of course we don't know what Swanson or Aiken or even Appel is going to be. And, you know, we can all think of the stars.

Like there was a run just before them of Carlos Correa, Garrett Cole, Bryce Harper, Steven Strasburg. All those guys are pretty phenomenal. But A, if you have a guy that you know is going to be an all-star during your years of club control, that guy's probably producing more than strasburg did for the nationals yeah probably uh and then harper you get smoked on it and then and cole probably not looking great but then if you keep going back i mean basically since 1991 the last 25 years you have one guy who's currently over 50 career war, which is not,

not even yet hall of fame, but fringe hall of fame. And that's a rod. So you give up your chance. What you pretty much give up your chance. You do give up your chance to get a row. Well, unless it's a rod,

unless he's in the envelope and really, yeah. I wonder what the chance is that he's in the envelope. How many all-stars do you get out of a typical draft? Yeah. Probably quite a bit. Probably 40 or, I don't know, 40? I don't know. You could figure that out too if you had some time.

But then after him, the next best is Maurer. You would be bummed to pass up Maurer. Adrian Gonzalez, you'd be bummed to pass up Adrian Gonzalez. David Price, you'd be bummed to pass up David Price. Bryce Harper's going to be a Hall of Famer, so you'd be bummed to pass up adrian gonzalez david price you'd be bummed to pass up david price bryce harper is going to be a hall of famer so you'd be bummed to pass him up those guys all made all-star teams in their first six years so you might be getting them but then you also have brian taylor paul wilson chris benson matt anderson brian bowlington delman young matt bush luke hochever appell tim Beckham, all guys, forget I said Appel, but all guys who didn't make an all-star game.

So you know you're not getting any of them. And I'm not sure, like Pat Burrell, I don't know if Pat Burrell made an all-star team five years after he was drafted or in the five years after he was drafted. Darren Erstad certainly didn't. The average career war, just Googling quickly, one of the many draft studies that have been done, the average career war for a number one pick appears to be about 20. Yeah. So I would guess that that is higher than. Well, no, but it doesn't matter, though.

That's not the right answer. That's not the right question, because that 20 might be heavily backloaded. Harold Baines is one of those. It could be backloaded. And this guy, you know, is an all-star during your years of club control. And if he's an all-star during your years of club control, he's much more likely to be performing as an all-star the year, you know, at an all-star level the year before and the year after. Those are the six years you want him to be good. So we're saying it sounds like that most teams, I would say no team ever takes this, but some teams should. And maybe all teams should, unless it's an anomalous year with a Bryce Harper or someone who's very obviously great. Other than that, you should probably take this, but you wouldn't.

I think that it's not unrealistic that it's the right move even for first overall, and I probably would not. If it were second overall, I think you should take it. And do you think teams would? Do you think a typical number two team takes this envelope? Yes. All right. Next question. Well, this one's quick.

Mike says, when was the last time you guys wore a baseball cap with an MLB logo on it? Good question. Yeah. Let's see. Yeah on it. Hmm. Good question. Yeah. Let's see. I, yeah, I, it wasn't that long ago. Did you this past summer? No, I didn't. I have, I have two hats.

I have two baseball caps. One is a Stompers cap and one is a San Jose Giants cap. But do you remember when we met? Yes. When we met. I don't remember what you were wearing other than a black hoodie. When Ben and I met, it was at a Yankees game while I was in New York. And we went to a Yankees game.

And Ben sat the entire three hours without saying a word to me the entire time. Well, I knew we had 400 hours of podcasting to do in the next few years. So I wanted to save my material. And then at the end, the giveaway that day was a Yankees hat. Yeah. Yankees cap. You threw yours away. Right.

Before you left the press box. You actually, you didn't just leave it on the counter. Did I try it on? I can't remember if you tried it on. Neither can I. But you didn't want to carry it. You must not have tried it on because you didn't want to carry it. And so you obviously didn't want to wear it.

No, I definitely didn't want to wear it. Both because it was one of those flimsy giveaway hats, but also just because I don't wear hats. And then, and so then you threw it away, but I took mine with me because it was actually the most comfortable hat I've ever worn. Wow. I wore it not much in public, but when I wanted to wear a cap, I would wear it because it was so comfortable ben that was the best cap i wish i had that cap huh okay so you've worn a cap fitting this description in the last uh say two three years yes okay i'm gonna say i haven't since uh no i'm just gonna pick a year 2007 okay okay hang on ben Okay. Hang on, Ben. I think I've done this. Oh, go ahead. From 1990 to 2010, players who made a single all-star game younger than 30, non-pitchers, produced on average 12.4 wins by age 30.

Now, this is still not a very good answer for two reasons. One is that players who debuted before 1990 or who were still active and under 30 after 2010 have those years removed from their totals. So, for instance, Bobby Bonilla's 12.5 wins is only from 27 to 30 because he was 27 in 1990. The other thing is that the reverse, the reason that this is skewed in the other way is that the median, like once you get down to the median, it's all guys who have like one all-star appearance or a lot of them, and they're much less likely to be in your envelope

because they make fewer all-star games. So they didn't necessarily make it at 23 or 26. So I don't know that this is particularly relevant, but just to give you an idea, if all you know is that a guy made an all star game early in his career, then you know, roughly 15 wins by age 30, which probably covers a fair estimate of your club control. Okay, good answer. All right. Well, I was going to say play index, but seems like we need a little bit of a buffer between the last play index and the next play index so let me take a quick one from brett a patreon supporter of ours and he has

a out-of-the-box suggestion for the rockies many course field problems he says i recall hearing that pete rose would bat from the other side of the plate when facing knuckleballers that way it wouldn't mess up his swing when he had to face a normal pitcher over the next few days. What if the Rockies signed exclusively switch hitters and had them hit right-handed at home and left-handed on the road? If the worry is dealing with spin or perspective or gravity differently at home and away, then the hitters would know that when I hit right-handed, I'm in coarse field and the spin is like this. And when I hit left-handed, I'm at normal altitude and the spin is like this. Would signing only likely slightly more expensive switch hitting players,

then telling them they need to relearn hitting when facing pitching from the same side, be far more trouble than it's worth? I'm going to say yes. Yeah, I mean, you have to assume that whatever Coors Field hangover effect there is, is smaller than a platoon advantage. Yeah. And you're giving up the platoon advantage yeah and you're giving up the platoon advantage in you know hundreds of your plate appearances yeah and so i would say

that that is probably too even if this worked which is not entirely clear it is i mean uh i don't know that the knuckleball theory works either uh but even even if it does neuroscientists to weigh in on whether the way that you're standing in the plate really allows you to compartmentalize the way a baseball moves like that. Yeah. But even then, the difference between a knuckleball and a major league pitch is like, I'm going to make up some unit of measurement. It's like 40. It's like 40 things. And the difference between a Coors Field curveball and a non-Coors Field curveball it's probably like three things like relative to the knuckleball difference it's a

it's like you know like a tenth of the difference or maybe even a 13.3 of the difference and so so if it worked for the knuckleball it's not clear that it would have the same benefit for the you know for the course field thing like the other thing is i i want to just point out that pete rose didn't actually do this okay that's important too i uh i found in his career just just now i found one game when he batted left-handed against a left-handed pitcher no games in which he batted right-handed against a right-handed pitcher and so if he did it he did it one time and i'm going to see if he did it no all of his all of his are in here okay as either right against left or left against right

all right except for one one game when he went oh for3 as a lefty against a lefty. That was the one. With a walk. Okay. Well, and then the other problem with this plan is that, A, you're limiting yourself to switch hitters. Only switch hitters, yeah. Which means you have far fewer players to choose from, which means you're going to have to pay more to get those players. I don't know. Maybe it's easier for the rookies to sign hitters in general now because they get to play in course field but probably be harder if you told them that they had to do this because no one's gonna want to do this so what's i'm trying to the the best team that you could

make with all switch hitters last year is francisco lindor at short, Neil Walker at second, Mark Teixeira at first. Let's see, Dexter Fowler, Billy Burns, and Ben Zobrist in the outfield. Young Gervis Solarte at third, and Andrew Romine catching. So that's your team. And yeah, that sort of gives you an idea of what, I guess you'd have Yosemite Rundall catching. So that gives you an idea of what i guess you'd have yasmani run all catching so that gives you an idea of how deep the the pool is like that's a fine team kind of yeah it's kind of a fine team it's not a great team but it's kind of a fine team and then kendry's miles dhing but the pool is get the plunder every other team's right yeah the pool is that shallow so yeah okay well creative solution but like everything else the Rockies have tried

I don't think that would work either okay do you want to do a play index sure so this is the flip side of last week's play index which was looking at the best major league debuts this is the worst major league debuts and if there are very few historically great major league debuts, historically memorable debuts, debuts in the record books, there are even fewer for bad debuts. And partly that's probably because a lot of people make their debut batting one time or even pinch running. And partly it's because, I don't know, it's harder to have an extremely bad day than an extremely good day.

Like what even is an extremely bad day? Like if you went, you know, 0 for 4 with four double plays, that'd be extremely bad. But that never really happens that, you know, very often. So there's not really an equivalent. Like the equivalent to going 3 for 4 or 4 for 5 with two homers and a double, which would have gotten you noticed in last week's, the equivalent of that on the negative

side is probably like oh for four with the strikeout or something like as far as commonness so there's not a uh all right i don't know why i'm downplaying this now nobody wants to hear i do have a point i am going to make a point uh at some point so uh the most played appearances in a debut without reaching base is urbane pickering who in 1931 went 0 for 7 and uh the reason this is interesting to me is because one of only a couple like a dozen or so players in history to go 0 for 3 with three strikeouts is calvin pickering we got we got two pickerings on the leaderboard how many pickerings are there i don't think there are very many no their average war is not very high um the worst win probability added in a major league debut is jd clauser who actually had a hit but um he came

up to bat down by one with runners at first and second and one out in the ninth and grounded into a double play. They demoted him the next day and he didn't come back for a month. And that sort of puts that's what I'm kind of saying. Like, that's not that bad. Like he went one for four with a bad double play. But it's not even like a historically bad double play, really. The worst debut in a single game, sorry, a single plate appearance debut was John Wathen, who came in as a pinch runner and then had to bat later in the game, batted with the bases loaded, with one out in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game,

and he grounded into a double play. And so in that one one plate appearance he cost his team about a third of a win the worst modern played uh game by plate appearances is jack hanrahan who went uh sorry jack hanahan who went over six and the thing that's fun about his is that uh by the time he batted for the first time his team was already down six to nothing and so you know this is all the pressure is off him for this game right down six nothing he grounds out whatever the next time he comes up it's like six three and then it's like six four and then it's like six five and it's like eight seven and then he finally bats for the final time and they're they're winning and so this incredible comeback happened around him and just every once in a, he comes up to make an out like he is just the constant out in this lineup during this, you know, tremendous comeback. So he had no part of it. But what was interesting to me was this.

There are 30 guys in history who have gone over four or worse without reaching base even once and striking out at least three times and of those 30 one is chris bryant and one is addison russell they both did it last year these two really super great players uh had two of the worst debuts ever. And in fact, if I go to the WPA, win probability added leaderboard, and go by the worst debuts ever, number 10 is Byron Buxton. And so we have these three guys who are incredible prospects. I mean, top five prospects, all of them going into the year, had mixed success in

the majors last year, but they all had historically bad debuts. And a lot of great players had bad debuts, but not a lot of great players had debuts quite this bad, but there is one. And you might, this might be, if I asked you to name a bad debut, this might be the only one that you might think of because a lot of people talked about it recently. But in 1995, Derek Jeter was called up. As the New York Times put it, it is Derek Jeter to the rescue in anticipation of him. He was 20 years old and he came up and went 0 for 5 in his debut. He struck out once. He came up and went 0-5 in his debut.

He struck out once. The New York Times wrote he struck out once. His dad was there. His dad had woken up at 3 in the morning and flown to Seattle from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to watch Derek Jeter go 0-5. He struck out with a pinch runner on third base with two outs in the 11th inning. So it was a significant 0 for 5 as well.

And then afterwards, he and his dad had to eat McDonald's because every restaurant was closed. So it was a pretty bad day, and Derek Jeter turned out just fine. This is not surprising. Lots of bad performances in a single game mean nothing. And for Russell and Chris Bryant and Byron Buxton, one bad day means nothing. Probably the other, by the way,

the other, the Jeter might be the all-time bummer of an opening game, opening day, but, sorry, Major League debut. But Sam Ewing might be also. He went 0 for 4. He's one of only three players to go oh for four with four strikeouts and the poor guy had to face nolan ryan in his debut uh nolan ryan pitched a complete game and so he had to face nolan ryan all four times struck out all four times uh in that game nolan ryan

struck out 12 through a four hitter. All right. By the way, urban pickering and Calvin pickering two of the three big league pickerings in history. There is a third pickering Ali pickering, but my favorite is urbane in part because his nickname is pick pick pickering. All right. Use the coupon code BP.

Get the discounted price of $30 on one year subscription. Miles says for reasons unknown, Joey Votto or whomever you think has the best plate discipline in the game today, has decided he'd like to break the all-time walk total for a single season. To that end, he will attempt to walk every plate appearance, regardless of the circumstances. This is sort of what Joey Votto critics think Joey Votto already does, but they're not right. If a ball is thrown down the middle of the plate, he'll attempt to foul it off. His plate appearances end only when he is hit by a pitch. He walks, strikes out, or accidentally puts the ball in play. My question, what would his line look like if he tried this?

The question is how much power would he have to, like he would have to hit home runs in order to do this. he would have to hit home runs in order to do this. So the balance of trying to draw every walk you possibly could without giving pitchers a free strike zone against you would be a fascinating question. Because not only do you, I mean, more home runs, like the better he hits, the more a pitcher is going to pitch around him. But also the less he's swinging, the more a pitcher is going to go right at him.

Yes. Although maybe that would be the trick. I wonder how long Joey Votto, how many pitches in a row Joey Votto could take before a pitcher treated him like the opposing pitcher on a 3-0 count. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I would think in a previous era of baseball, you could get away with that for a while. But now I think Jeff Sullivan would write a post about it in two days, three days, maybe. And then everyone would know. And, you know, advanced scouts would know and people looking at numbers would know and everyone would know. looking at numbers would know and everyone would know pitchers don't always follow scouting reports, but I still think this would get out very quickly and you couldn't get away

with it. If you, if you wanted to set the all time walk total for a single season, going about it this way would be counterproductive. I think if you're Joey Votto, at least if you're Joey Votto, then I mean, Joey Votto,

if he wanted to walk all the time, probably wouldn't do things that differently from what he's doing now. I mean, Joey Votto, if he wanted to walk all the time, probably wouldn't do things that differently from what he's doing now. Because he does need to hit for some power to get pitchers respect so that they will pitch around him so that he can draw walks. So I don't know that if he were, I mean, he might already be close to the optimal approach for Joey Votto if he were trying to walk every plate appearance, which he is not. He could probably change his approach whereby if he just quit swinging on three balls ever, then pitchers who became aware of this trend would not fear going to three balls on him as much. aware of this trend would not fear going to three balls on him as much because because a huge amount of the damage that he does is when he swings the bat on 20 or on 31 and hits doubles and home runs and so they're trying not to fall behind him they're not not trying to fall behind him because they don't want to walk him part of it but also because they don't want to have to come in and

let him hit a home run and so you could imagine that he could still be just as threatening on 00, 01, 10, 12, 02 as he is now. So not change his approach at all, keep some respect. But if he really wanted to go for walks, once he got close to the finish line, then he probably could add walks to his total that way way just by not swinging and also put himself into more of those positions because pitchers don't fear those positions as much against him. So I think he could get more walks. But yeah, he couldn't just not swing. That would be counterproductive.

Which is weird. It's weird to think that you get more walks by swinging. Yeah, it is. Okay, let's take one from Jenny. People are probably familiar with the subject of this question, but maybe we can say something semi-original about it. Jenny says, I am yet again wildly confused after reading Goose Gossage's comments about the current state of baseball and Jose Bautista. I'm sure you both saw his comments about Bautista being an effing disgrace to the game As Gossage expressed a clear distaste for bat flipping in modern celebrations

What is it about old-timers that makes them so unwilling to accept the modern baseball culture? They make it seem like baseball has become a sport for clowns I understand that flashy celebrations were not part of the game when Gossage was still active But are these sorts of outbursts warranted at all? He also said that baseball was being run by a group of freaking nerds. Do you guys have any explanations for why these retired players love to hate on sabermetrics and analysis? It seems natural for me to accept the evolution of these advanced statistics. They are increasing our knowledge of baseball and giving us more comprehensive stats to interpret. We are consistently understanding

more and more about each player and the game as a whole. Why do X players often see this as such a bad thing? And this, of course, is a constant throughout baseball history and throughout really all parts of history. I think I've maybe mentioned before a class I took in college, baseball and American culture, I think it was called. And when people ask if I ever had a very influential teacher or had some sort of transformative classroom experience, I don't really have any, but this would probably be the closest thing to me because it sounded like it would be an easy class. There were a lot of athletes in this class who I think were very dismayed when they got to the class and saw the syllabus, but it's kind of a tough class. And we did a lot of reading of old source material.

And it just sort of made me realize just how repetitive we are as people and how every generation complains about the same things. And I think it's just kind of made me more laid back as a person just about all issues because I feel like we've survived them as a species before. But the thing that maybe is not mentioned is that although people are always complaining about the same things, that doesn't mean that the things aren't changing. They are evolving to some extent, like you did an article on World Series celebrations and what they used to look like compared to what they look like now. And in the past, there was nothing. Players would just walk off the field.

Now, of course, there's a pile up and champagne and people running around the field and being on horses and all sorts of stuff. So things actually have changed, even though people will tweet a gif of Mickey Mantle flipping his bat or something. And obviously those things happened. Standards do change, but each generation is offended by the change in those standards in the same way, sort of predictably. And I think maybe this is overblown because there are lots of old players who are totally okay with these things and they just don't say anything about it and no one quotes them. Or if they do get quoted, no one pays any attention. Whereas if Goose Gossage comes out and starts cursing and saying everything is terrible, then he gets a lot of attention for doing that. And so it seems like all old timers are yelling at clouds, whereas really not really embracing of new trends and developments and others are

very much so and are more with it than many people of my generation. So it varies very much. It's kind of weird that Gossage is the poster boy of this, I guess, because he hasn't really been hurt by it. It would be one thing if people diminished his accomplishments because of the way that sabermetrics understand his role or something. But if anything, it's been the opposite. People kind of agree with him when he complains about closers these days going one inning and getting saves. Stat heads are often kind of in his corner and he made it into the hall of fame. So he doesn't really have anything to complain about. So it's sort of weird that he is personally offended by this, unless it's like he is

offended that modern day closers get the same acclaim for doing their jobs that he did, even though his job was more difficult. I think there are just a lot of people not I don't think he's an outlier. I might be one of these people. But I think, you know, a lot of people like to argue. And so when you ask somebody, you know, you have to remember that most of the time these people are like these guys are being asked a question. And I just I don't know this for sure. But my guess is that like the way that the brain works is that someone goes, hey, what do you what do you think about this thing? And then your brain very quickly goes, OK, which side of this am I on? Like where like what is the what is the controversy of this question?

And what side am I traditionally on? And so then you choose that side, you're like your brain without even realizing it, your brain just sort of consciously knows, is this part of my agenda? Or is this against my agenda? Is this like, you know, I can do this for political stuff, like immediately, like without even thinking about it, my brain goes, is this good or bad for, for my, you know, for my candidate? And so then once you know whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter if it's 1% or 70% on the other side of the spectrum. Once you have that, then you're going to argue your position with the temperament that you always have. So if I'm asked, what is something to Ben, give me something that I might

argue that is not going to make people dislike me for arguing it. Like, I like, what do I like? What am I against? ISIS. Okay. Okay. You are against ISIS. I'm against ISIS. So let's say that I'm arguing with somebody who's like pro ISIS. And like, I'm going to find my argumentative level. Like, maybe my temperament puts me, you know, at a 7.4. Like I argue for ISIS, sorry, against ISIS, very much against ISIS. I argue against ISIS at a 7.4. Like my amp has turned up to 7.4. And if I am similarly asked to argue about whether I like the color green or blue more, I am also going to argue that at 74% because my argument does not reflect how strongly I feel about it.

The argument reflects my temperament and how strongly I feel about myself being right about whatever I'm arguing. And so it might be hard for me to come up with blue or green, which one represents my worldview. But you know, most people and most issues, you're able to sort of intuit which side of it you're on. And then you argue it at your at your level of argumentativeness. And so Goose Gossage, you know, I think his temperament is just he's probably like a, an 8.7, 8.8 arguer. And he's old school school so i don't even like i don't even take this that seriously like i don't think that he's necessarily like i don't know that he wakes up every day and thinks

this stuff somebody came to him and asked him a question and uh he responded like goose would respond to somebody who argued that blue is better than green. Yeah, right. That's kind of how I see it. Pretty much. And to the extent that there's a resentment about stat heads running the game or sabermetrics or anything, I mean, if you make a big deal about how we understand the game better today, that implies that the game was understood less well in an earlier era, say Goose Gossage's era. Some people take umbrage if they're told that they misunderstand something. Other people see it as an opportunity to understand something better. I don't know what

determines that, how you are raised or some inherent quality. Maybe he resents not being in the spotlight anymore and he doesn't like that a way to be in the spotlight now is to flip your bat. I don't know. It could be different for every player, but it certainly is a constant, at least refrain, if not for everyone, at least for a member of every generation. I know there also is some research that's shown that our thinking kind of crystallizes or solidifies or becomes more sclerotic once you reach a certain age. So there may be some tendency for people at a certain stage of life to be less receptive to what appear to be counterintuitive ideas. So I don't take it very seriously. All right, I guess we're finished. You can support us on Patreon by going to

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But if you think you'd like the book $20 worth and not $23 worth, it's now in your price range. Our five named Patreon supporters of the day. I guess I can name Brett, Brett Larder, who sent us the question about the Rockies earlier, but five more for today. Kazudo Yamazaki, David Cutter, Mark Sands, Sam Raker, and one supporter who wishes to be known only as Sean, S-H-A-U-N. Thank you all. By the way, someone just posted a link to your Mike Trout article in the Facebook group. First comment was about how you wrote should've instead of should have. Good way to end the podcast. Brings it right back to the beginning. Okay, we'll be back tomorrow with the preview for the Toronto Blue Jays.